
Class Aj1^_6_^ 

Book '■"''" 

CopghtN" 



COliYRIGMT DETOSir. 



THE MORAL CONDITION AND 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHILD 



The Moral Condition and 

Development of the 

Child 



BY 

W. ARTER WRIGHT, Ph. D., D. D. 



WITH INTRODUCTION BY 

TRUMBULL G. DUVALL, B. D., Ph. D. 

Professor of Philosophy in Ohio Wesleyan University. 




HODDER & STOUGHTON 

NEW YORK 

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






Copyright, 1911 
GEORGE H. DOR AN COMPANY 



-\s 



f^' 



'Cl.A;^l)7S5l 



Oi 



TO MY CHILDREN, 

WHO IN THE REALIZATIONS OP LIFE HAVE 

ILLUSTRATED THE THEORIES 

OF THIS BOOK. 



INTEODUCTION 

It was a saying of Borden Parker Bowne that, 
although a sound philosophy might conceivably 
be of no benefit to the world, there could be no 
doubt of the real damage done by an unsound 
philosophy. With even greater emphasis might 
one say this of theological dogma ; for in no other 
field has the lust for system at the expense of life 
borne more bitter fruit. And good men have sel- 
dom strayed further than when, under the ty- 
ranny of the a priori, they have essayed to extend 
their deductions to the moral and religious status 
of the child. 

Not the least of the merits of the following 
discussion, while the author makes no claim of be- 
ing a specialist in psychology, is his appreciation 
of the bearing of psychology upon his subject. 
The point of view and the method of approach 
adopted by the psychologist bring to light ma- 
terial that may be obtained in no other way. And 
no safe theological structure can be built without 
this material. The child-mind and the child-life 
have their own secrets to tell, and they only learn 
these who patiently ask what the facts are, and 
not what the facts ought to be. 

But in these chapters there is more serious 



viii INTRODUCTION 

business than exploding nnsound dogmas of 
childhood. The stress seems not so much to be 
laid upon the child as upon children, and the main 
plea is the children's plea for a higher standard 
of parentage and a recognition of the parents' 
place in the world. And this plea deserves to 
be heard. The child, summoned into existence by 
no will of his own, has every right to expect that 
his parents will undertake the moral burdens of 
fatherhood and motherhood. He has the right to 
expect them to maintain the wholesome idealism 
of the home: for it is the home that gives set 
and direction to his appreciations and shapes his 
unconscious tendencies and reasons for doing 
things. His opportunity for achieving a charac- 
ter — a perfectly fashioned will — depends, in the 
main, upon the fidelity of mother and father in 
meeting these conditions. To give the world a 
healthy-minded, generous youth, one who respects 
others as he respects himself, who has learned 
the lessons of self-control and unselfish service, 
means mothering and fathering the growing soul 
for almost a score of years, and is the greatest 
undertaking, as it is the true business of life. 
The world needs men and women of this sort, 
and it can not have too many of them. To give 
it any other sort is to sin grievously against so- 
ciety. Parents who fail at this point, whatever 
they may have amassed or achieved, have failed 
in the one thing where failure is irretrievable. 
In these later years the psychologist has pro- 



INTRODUCTION ix 

duced abundant material which the theologian has 
as yet not appropriated. Much of this material 
bears directly on the problem of the moral and 
religious education of the child. And the student 
of social conditions has been daily tracing the 
vices and crimes of society back to their begin- 
nings in the morally bankrupt home. There is a 
timeliness in this discussion, therefore, which 
ought to insure for it the wide interest and 
thoughtful consideration which it merits. 

Tkumbull Gillett Duvall. 
Ohio Wesley an University. 



CONTENTS 



PAGB 

Ikteoductiok, - vii 

FoEEWORD, xiii 

I. Origins, 19 

II. The Child as a Fact Given by Nature, 42 

III. The Birth of the Spirit, - - 59 

IV. Is There a Moral Bias in Human Na- 

ture? 69 

V. Heredity and Environment, - 80 

VI. Hereditary Sin Disproven by Recovery, 89 
VII. Acquired Traits Not Transmissible by 

Heredity, _ .... 96 

VIII. The Periods of Development: 

Section 1. First Childhood, - 115 

Section 2. Second Childhood, - 120 

Section 3. Third Childhood, - 126 

Section 4. Later Childhood, - 133 

Section 5. The Years that Follow, 142 

IX. The Moral Sense, _ . . . 145 

X. Scientific Era of Eeligious Instruction, 155 

XI. Baptism, --.--- 163 

XII. How Can a Child be Saved? - - 173 

XIII. The Birth From Above, - - 178 

XIV. Which Road? 195 

XV. Summary, ----- 204 

xi 



FOEEWOED 

Que point of view is that of Divine Immanence. 
All real forces are God's forces. Undoubtedly 
man, and possibly devils, may use these forces in 
fighting against God. But when we discover how 
those forces operate in themselves, we know what 
God has planned. All laws, wherever found, 
whether biological, psychological, or moral, are 
God's laws and make known to us the divine 
method and will. Their origin being identical, 
they are all equally sacred and obligatory. I have 
never found myself in the predicament where a 
psychological law contradicted a revealed law, 
and hence where I must eliminate one or the 
other; but I do find aid from the biologic or 
psychologic law in the interpretation of the re- 
vealed law. Assuming the divine origin of both, 
I am bound to find an interpretation of both that 
harmonizes and not to leave them in apparent 
contradiction. 

The *'Boy Problem" is solved usually before 
it is attacked. If it remains until it becomes 
acute, it is never solved. Unless solved in child- 
hood, it is insoluble except in rare cases. A 
youth is confessedly difficult to influence and 
guide. He has come to the period of self -guidance 

xiii 



xiv FOEEWOED 

and independence, and is suspicions of all at- 
tempts to control Mm by others. He is influenced 
by the **gang^' more easily and naturally than 
by those who are in places of authority. Unless 
he has already had safe principles instilled into 
him, by which he may safely direct his own 
course, the battle is probably already lost. The 
insuperable difficulty is not so much with the boy 
— for there is a pretty sure law of his character- 
formation — ^but with the parent who will not 
awaken to the problem until it is no longer sol- 
uble. The saddest hour that ever comes to a par- 
ent is that hour when he must reap the fruit of 
the neglect of the training of his child. It is far 
darker than the hour when the body of a loved 
child is consigned to the grave. 

**How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is 
to have a thankless child!'' A father said to 
me not long ago: *^I do not know what to do 
with my boy. He left home this morning after 
breakfast and probably will not be home before 
midnight. I do not know where he is, or what 
he is doing. He has no respect for me." He 
seriously discussed turning him over to the State 
to be controlled in one of its institutions. Par- 
ents quite asually listen in incredulity when a 
pastor points out to them in advance that such 
an hour is coming. Afterwards, when it has 
come, they make frantic appeals for aid; but it 
is usually too late. God's laws of child-training 
can not be violated or neglected by Christian peo- 



FOEEWOED XV 

pie with any greater impnnity than His general 
laws by other people. That which they sow they 
mnst reap just as others do. 

The practical bearing of the discussion in the 
following pages should be largely in the direction 
of a different approach to the religion of children. 
The traditional door of entrance for them into re- 
lations with God has been through the teaching 
that they have a sinful nature of which they must 
be conscious and make confession, and concern- 
ing which they must repent. It is proper here 
for me to point out the sad consequences of that 
teaching in my own experience. As I look back 
upon it now I am certain that it was wholly 
mistaken, and that my childhood was greatly 
wronged. I say this without attaching blame to 
any one; for all were under the dominion of a 
theory that was unquestioned at that time, and 
which still widely prevails. 

I grew up in a home that was Christian in a 
very genuine sense. My father was a faithful 
preacher of the gospel for nearly fifty years. My 
parents' religious leading was always consistent 
and genuine. It was not their direct solicitude 
concerning me that caused the misdirected ef- 
forts; but rather the influence of the religious 
teaching heard on all hands, in pulpit and Sunday 
school and religious gatherings. 

Very early, at most at seven years of age, I 
wanted to commence the religious life, and pre- 



xvi FOEEWOED 

sented myself again and again as a seeker during 
four or five years. Among the people who talked 
to me on the subject was a certain preacher, who 
was often in our home for some years and who 
never missed an opportunity of urging me to 
become a Christian. He was a very zealous man, 
though probably not very learned or wise. I do 
not know why I should have come to dread the 
contact with the man; for his suggestion was in 
line with all the teaching of those days, and I had 
not rebelled against it, but rather had striven to 
realize it. It must have been some instinct, bet- 
ter than my teaching or my thought, that gave 
me an aversion to his suggestions, and to him 
personally — an instinct that resented the idea that 
I was not a Christian. I do not remember that 
the matter was strongly urged upon me by any 
other person. So far as my home was concerned, 
I was treated as though I were a Christian, 
though this practice was not supported by any 
doctrinal teaching. In seeking for an experience, 
I never made the least headway. I can remember 
the instructions given to me at the altar, that I 
should repent of my sins — not specific sins, but 
of sin in general. I was taught that I should feel 
that I was a sinner, and I tried to have a sorrow- 
ful feeling. But it was of no use. I could not 
enter into the experience portrayed, and finally, 
when about eleven or twelve years of age, I be- 
came discouraged, and for two or three years en- 
tered into some sinful habits. I thought that I 



FOEEWOED xvii 

had adopted the Calvinistic doctrine of the non- 
elect ; that I was one snch ; that there was no sal- 
vation for me/ I became hardened and rather 
careless in some matters. I say that I thought 
that I had adopted this doctrine. I would have 
explained my situation at that time by so saying. 
I very much doubt now that it was a real convic- 
tion. It did not take me long to discard it, at 
least, when a way into the Christian life was at 
last clear before me. 

All this childish instruction I now believe was 
an entire mistake, and seven years of my life were 
spent in religious darkness, with great risk that 
my alienation from Christ should become per- 
manent, by the teaching that I needed an experi- 
ence of repentance from sin, and a conversion. 
I believe this without assuming that my childhood 
life was without fault. I at least was not in a 
state of rebellion against God. I wanted to be 
counted among His followers. Actual sin should 
have been dealt with as individual faults, as we 
deal with all of God's children, and not as a proof 
of a depraved heart. 

If the following discussion shall save some 
from such years of suffering, and prevent such 
risks as I passed through, it, no doubt, will be 
amply justified. 

W. Akter Wright. 

Delaware^ Ohio, June 1, 1911. 



CHAPTEE I 

OEIGINS 

Fkom the standpoint of modern science nothing 
can be more absurd than the discussion of Orig- 
inal Sin by Augustin as he comes to deal with 
sin in its action in our animal nature. That 
which the scientist regards as the necessary im- 
pulse of nature, wisely and divinely arranged for 
the continuance of human beings on the earth, 
and the provision for their health and well-being, 
Augustin assumes to be the result of the intro- 
duction of sin. This sinfulness may be assumed 
as axiomatic from his point of view, because the 
functioning of nature is attended with fleshly 
gratification; as if the hatefulness and painful- 
ness of an action were the only conditions that 
would save if from being sinful. He seeks to de- 
duce from Scripture hints as to the pleasureless 
working of human nature before sin had entered 
the world. 

The assumption that sin only is pleasurable 
is unfounded; the necessity of explaining away 
the gratification is forced; and any such inter- 
pretation of Scripture must be erroneous, unless 
we assume that the Bible was written by some 
authority as inimical to modern science as Augus- 

19 



20 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

tin himself. This latter assumption I believe is 
entirely unnecessary; but as I turn away from 
it, I turn away with equal decision from the whole 
traditional intepretation of human nature's re- 
lation to sin. 

One can not read the literature of the day 
when the traditional doctrine of human depravity 
arose without having the strong suspicion that 
it all originated from the assumed sinfulness of 
the act of human procreation. It grew up in the 
same atmosphere which produced the celibate 
clergy and the immaculateness of the virgin life — 
two of the most prolific sources of the corruption 
of Christianity, as well as being doctrines of un- 
bounded offense against the spirit of modem 
science. The purity of the race, or the excellence 
of any one of the races, is now held to be identified 
with the power of reproduction as with no other 
one human element. Biologically, virginity is the 
fundamental sin, and Nature has sought to pro- 
tect living beings against it by her strongest pas- 
sion. Race senility accompanies the vices which 
destroy this fundamental physical virtue. Race 
suicide is the deepest, the most prolific, the far- 
thest-reaching vice of a boasting civilization. 
When religion strikes at the fundamental human 
function of reproduction as in its very nature sin- 
ful, it flies in the face of all modem thought and 
conviction. We owe it to our faith to eradicate 
this so fundamental error and offense, not only 
from our creed, but the least suggestion of it 



OEIGINS n 

even from our consciousness. This monstrous 
barnacle is not of the essence of our faith. It 
must be as offensive to God as it is to truth. 

It was the view of Schopenhauer that the 
^^ essential element in human nature, and finally 
in the whole of reality, consists in a mys- 
terious impulse toward life, a blind restlessly 
struggling will wholly unguided of reason. . . . 
In nature intelligence yields place entirely to this 
vital impulsion ; such knowledge as is here devel- 
oped merely subserves the interests of self-pres- 
ervation. ' ' ( Eucken : ' ' Problem of Human Life, ' ' 
511.) This will or impulse of Schopenhauer may 
be compared to what Augustin called sin in 
human nature. Schopenhauer regarded existence 
as a calamity. If Augustin had frankly taken the 
view that human existence was to be deplored, 
then it would have been consistent to regard the 
passion toward reproduction as sinful. 

If the doctrine of Original Sin grew from such 
a root as this, then the whole subject needs to be 
restudied and restated in the light of what we 
now know of human nature, conditioned as it is 
by a physical or animal foundation. 

Augustin was orthodox and Pelagius was het- 
erodox ; but from the view of the modern student 
Pelagius 's statements are verbally nearer the 
truth than are those of Augustin. This may be 
the mere accidents of words that have in reality 
changed their content. It is altogether likely that 
Pelagius was not so near modern belief as his 



22 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

words may indicate. At any rate we are not to 
disavow what is now evident, just because the 
form of words was once pronounced heretical. 
The words no longer convey the same conceptions 
that they did as used by Augustin. The whole 
point of view has been changed. It is no longer 
enlightening or helpful to affirm or deny some 
of the old points of controversy; e. g., it is ap- 
proaching the subject under a wrong presupposi- 
tion to affirm or deny that infants should be re- 
generated in order to be admitted into the King- 
dom of God. It is not illuminating to affirm or 
deny that ' ' children are in the same state in which 
the first man was before transgression;'' and yet 
this was precisely the point of the Pelagian con- 
troversy. The whole subject of the moral con- 
dition of the child has to be restudied from the 
point of view of modern biology and psychology. 

The Traditional View Was Too Materialistic. 

Hamack points out that one of the early de- 
velopments of Christianity, a contribution of 
Orientalism on the soil of Hellenism, was the 
^'depreciation of the world, the contention that 
it were better never to have existed, that it was 
the result of a blunder, and that it was a prison, 
or at least a penitentiary for the spirit.'' An- 
other development was ''the conviction that the 
connection with the flesh ('that soiled robe') 
depreciated and stained the spirit; in fact that 
the latter would inevitably be ruined unless the 



OEIGINS 23 

connection were broken or its inflnence counter- 
acted.'' ('^Mission and Expansion of Christian- 
ity,'' I, 32.) We tlius see that the later deduc- 
tions concerning the sin inherent in the flesh, 
which are noted in Augustin's teaching and since, 
may have been a contribution of Oriental myth- 
ical thought, brought under the formative power 
of Hellenizing thought— something read into 
Christianity, and not a just product of it. 

Augustin thought of sin as something phys- 
ical, something inhering in the flesh, and did not 
confine it to the will and the moral nature. To 
him a *^ movement" of the flesh could be a sin, 
even when that ^^ movement" was subjugated by 
the will and denied gratification. This is as ab- 
surd as to affirm sin of the animals of the field 
or the interaction of chemical forces.* 



* While Augustin has stated more explicitly than any other the doctrine of the 
medieval Church concerning the evil nature of the "movements" of the flesh, yet there 
is evidence that his belief far antedated him. It can hardly be traced to the Jews in the 
form in which he held it, for they have a saying in the Talmud which reflects a different 
sentiment. It says: "These four are reckoned as dead — the blind, the leper, the poor, 
and the childless." But the sentiment was so strong in the time of Origen, who lived 
from 185-254 A. D., that in his youth in his aspiration for purity he mutilated himself 
for the Kingdom of Heaven's sake. (Eusebius H. E., vi, 8.) If any of the fathers of the 
Church deserves to be styled the "greatest of the fathers," it w£is this Origen, undoubt- 
edly the most learned of them aU. The volumes that he wrote are said to have been 
numbered in the thousands, and his impress on the Church has never perished. 

Meanwhile the doctrines of virginity and celibacy grew apace and the foundations 
of marriage were undermined, leading to the greatest crimes and scandals that ever dis- 
graced the Christian Church. For many centuries marriage was regarded as a purely 
civil contract, and in that form bitterly assailed by the Church fathers. Chastity was 
preached not because it was a good thing in itself, but because man's fall and the neces- 
sity for his redemption was traced to an indiscretion committed in the Garden of Eden. 
All intercourse between the sexes was discountenanced; to have children under any cir- 
cumstances was a sin. Young people were enjoined tb enter into vows of celibacy, and 
multitudes of them did so. Marriage was regarded as evil and vicious. Decrees were 
made forbidding married women to approach the altar or to touch the Eucharist, and 
it was even declared to be doubtful whether mairied persons cohabiting with each other 



24 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

We will not overlook those instances of the 
Instful movements of the flesh which are not re- 
strained, and those sexual relations which are ad- 
mittedly sinful. Of such improper relations there 
are two classes: (1) Those which are physically 
forbidden; (2) those which are morally forbid- 
den. Social science is making a careful study of 
the first class and denouncing marriage or sexual 
relations between certain classes of people : those 
who are so physically diseased or defective that 
they can not transmit to their offspring sound 
minds or healthy bodies. The known law of he- 
redity out of such violation of physical laws brings 
to children its fearful penalty of a debilitated or 



could be saved. St. Chrysostom declared in the fifth century that if man had not sinned 
the world would have been peopled by other means. Any married woman who desired 
to be a nun was allowed to leave her husband, and he was forbidden to take another 
wife. Marriage was forbidden during Lent and at sundry other specified seasons, until, 
as an old writer quietly remarks, "There were but few weeks or days in the year in 
which people could get married at all." "In the fifth century priests were expected 
at least to abstain from the privileges of marriage, if not from marriage itself. Pope 
Innocent I. refused holy orders to any priest who had married a widow, and commanded 
every priest to be deposed who should be guilty of the crime of having children by his 
wife. It was not, however, until the twelfth century that the wives of the clergy were 
driven forth for good, and that the Roman Catholic priesthood was firmly established 
upon a celibate basis. . . . Marriage was restrained, but not indulgence. Some 
of the popes led scandalous lives, and the clergy who did abstain from marriage kept 
concubines, sometimes in large numbers. . . . Enactments had to be passed for- 
bidding priests from living with their mothers and sisters, because of the prevalence of 
Incest; nunneries and monasteries were hotbeds of debauchery, and congregations who 
had an unmarried priest to minister stipulated in some cases, with a view to the protec- 
tion of their wives and daughters, that he should keep a concubine. In a similar spirit 
it was decreed by a council that no priest should be allowed to go out at night without 
a candle." (From Marriage and Heredity, by J. F. Nisbet, 40-45, who refers as his 
authority to Lea's Sacerdotal Celibacy.) 

It is not at all remarkable that from centuries of such abhorrent doctrine and 
more horrible practices that we should have as a heritage the doctrine of Original Sin. 
We only aflBrm that it is high time that our age which has clear moral vision concerning 
the practices, which are the root of this doctrine, should now turn away from the doc- 
trine, which is its inevitable fruit. Humanity is disgraced by the doctrine aa really as 
by the practices. 



OEIGINS 26 

Regenerate nervous constitution. Children of 
such parents will probably be physically weak or 
idiotic or criminal. Thus physical heredity of 
physical consequences is freely admitted and 
greatly to be emphasized. 

But it will be readily noted that this is not 
the inheritance which has given rise to the doc- 
trine of Original Sin. We pass to a considera- 
tion of the second class : those who violate moral 
standards. Here we are dealing with fleshly lust 
and sinful gratification. The sinfulness, however, 
does not directly consist in the physical act, ac- 
cording to the general estimate of mankind; but 
in the violation of certain moral standards that 
society has erected governing the sexual relation. 
So that we have no reason to expect that the fruit 
of this sin will be shown in the physical nature 
or constitution of the child; but as a moral fault, 
if the law of heredity holds, it should be mani- 
fest in the moral constitution. Does the law of 
heredity manifest itself in the moral nature of 
illegitimate children? Are they more vicious, 
more morally perverse, more inaccessible to vir- 
tuous influence than other children? There are 
no known facts to establish the affirmative of this. 
In Eoman Catholic countries of South America 
from fifty to ninety per cent of the children are 
born out of wedlock, or were previous to the en- 
actment of recent civil marriage laws. These 
children can not be differentiated from others by 
any marks of vice or sinfulness. They start, so 



26 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

far as personal moral eqnipment is concerned, on 
a level with others. Nor can it be shown that the 
case is different in the far smaller percentage 
of illegitimate children in onr own land. 

"When we consider the environment of these 
children and its legitimate moral effects, we will 
see that there is a real handicap in the race for 
life. The immoral conditions which produced the 
illegitimate relations persist after birth and 
through life. They can not fail to leave their 
impression. The child grows up deprived of the 
helpfulness of one or both parents. Even when 
the relations were not the outcome of unusual de- 
pravity of one or both parents, the lack of a 
proper family life is a great deprivation to the 
moral character of the child. Aside from this 
consideration we have no ground for affirming 
that the illegitimate child is more sinful in tend- 
ency than are other children. 

But we return from this digression on the per- 
ennial elements of this subject to the primitive 
discussion which laid the foundation of the tra- 
ditional doctrine. Coelestius, the disciple of Pe- 
lagius, is credited with holding that ^^sin is not 
born with a man — it is subsequently committed 
by the man: for it is shown to be a fault, not of 
nature, but of the will.'' (^^Nicene and Post- 
Nicene Fathers," V, 239.) In condemning this 
opinion and excommunicating Coelestius, the 
Church seemed committed to the materialistic 
view of sin, as something born in the flesh, and to 



OEiaiNS 27 

have denounced the spiritual view that it is of 
the moral nature. Pelagius is quoted by Augustin 
as saying : * ^ Everything good and everything evil 
on account of which we are either laudable or 
blameworthy, is not born with us but is done by 
us : for we are born not fully developed, but with 
a capacity for either conduct; and we are pro- 
created as without virtue, so also without vice; 
and previous to the action of our own proper will, 
that alone is man which God has formed/' (do. 
241.) The other statement for which both of 
these men were condemned and which, it was as- 
sumed, was identical in import, is far from being 
so; it was, ^^ Adam's sin injured only himself, and 
not the human race.'' The word ^'injure" is too 
physical a term to cover the transmission of such 
a spiritual fact as the guilt of sin. Again, Augus- 
tin says (*^ Original Sin," 45): *^A regenerate 
man does not regenerate, but generates sons ac- 
cording to the flesh; and thus he transmits to 
his posterity not the condition of the regenerated 
but only of the generated." This play upon 
words, without any pretense of estimating the re- 
alities behind the words, has held the Church in 
bondage to the doctrine of the unregenerated con- 
dition of children at birth for fourteen hundred 
years. It sounds like holy foolery that the prac- 
tices of parents and Churches in child-training 
during all these centuries should be based upon 
word-plays without meaning. What possible 
meaning could the word regenerate have in ap- 



28 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

plication to a new-born child! Tlie child is not 
even a person; it is only a non-moral being as 
yet. Angus tin again says: ^^The real objection 
against them (the heretics) is that they refuse 
to confess that unbaptized infants are liable to 
the condemnation of the first man, and that orig- 
inal sin has been transmitted to them and requires 
to be purged by regeneration. " It is not so very 
wonderful that such a physical disease, as sin is 
thus thought to be, could be cured by such a phys- 
ical remedy as baptism in material water. 

But sin and its cure can be applied only to a 
moral being. Moral qualities pertain to persons. 
An infant is not a person. Universal recognition 
of this fact is evident from reference to a child 
as it. Human law recognizes this, and the whole 
field of common sense affirms it. It does not even 
have a mind that functions, to say nothing of a 
conscience. It has not self-consciousness, much 
less moral consciousness. Theology has for long 
been an exception to the otherwise universal ac- 
knowledgment of this truth. At just what point 
we shall say the child attains to personality, it is 
difficult and somewhat arbitrary to say. That it 
is on the way to personality at ^ve years, ten 
years, there will be general agreement, no doubt. 
That it has attained full personality before the 
close of adolescence would not be agreed to by all. 
That it has no moral character at birth, that it 
has full moral character at seventeen, are the two 
fixed points. That it is a partial moral being be- 



ORIGINS 29 

tween these points seems to be the necessary con- 
clusion. Where the personality comes from is a 
question that the materialist can hardly answer. 
G. Stanley Hall says (^^Adolescence," I, 2): 
*^ Certain it is that the cellular theory needs to be 
supplemented by assuming, both in the organism 
as a whole and in the species, powers that can 
not be derived from the cells." So if we should 
find that at one time the child is not a moral be- 
ing, and later that he is, we would not need to 
be staggered by the fact, as it is no more con- 
trary to the history of the individual than many 
a physical crisis through which he has passed. 
He has received from without that which was not 
within himself. We have to assume an outside 
Builder even of the body of the child. 

To affirm sin of a being without personality 
or moral character is a confused use of the word, 
in which we must be thinking of some physical as 
distinguished from some moral conditions. The 
child-condition is a sort of larva-condition of per- 
sonality. At puberty it throws off the old en- 
closure and passes definitely into a new state of 
personality for which the larva state was a prep- 
aration. The subordination of the child to the 
parent is based as much in its moral inabilities 
as in its physical. The parent is moral character 
for the child, and he has no distinct moral respon- 
sibility in himself, although he is constantly grow- 
ing toward it through the years. 

We must, then, avoid the confusion of moral 



30 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

and physical terms, and clearly apprehend sin as 
a quality of a moral being, and allow the appe- 
tites of the flesh to stand nncondemned as long 
as they perform their work of maintaining a 
normal physical basis for the spiritual life. We 
may have a diseased body, a riotous and uncon- 
trollable nervous constitution, a deranged brain; 
but a sinful physical nature we can not have with- 
out robbing ourselves of words which describe the 
condition of a spiritual being, and leaving our- 
selves without any means of portraying the na- 
ture and working as well as the abnormalities of 
that being, so different from the physical.* 

Without doubt the great weakness of tradi- 
tional theology in its hold upon the people is the 
seeming unreality of some of its doctrines. The 
world's vital creed is wrought out in the experi- 
mental laboratory of life. The theologian 's creed 
often smells of the cloister and the study. Some 
people will give assent to a fictitious creed that 
at the same time takes no hold upon their lives. 
They will still continue to repeat shibboleths into 
which they neglect to translate conviction. This 
is a triumph for formalism, but a loss for godli- 
ness. Moreover, those who balk are they who are 

* "It had been a tendency of the Enlightenment to see in evil a mere defect of 
our sensual nature, which would disappear in proportion as reason became stronger. 
Kant, on the contrary, traces evil to the will: for him it is not a mere falling short of 
the good, but is in direct antagonism to it; it is not dependent on outward conditions, 
but is "radically" evil. The problem becomes thus more acute, but the philosopher 
is not thereby constituted a believer in the dogma of the Fall and Original Sin, that 
'most unseemly of all conceptions.' For man has also a permanent disposition toward 
goodness, and this must be energetically called upon to confront the foe." — (Eucken: 
''Problem of Human Life," 540.) 



OEIGINS 31 

most earnest and honest and thoughtful. The 
skeptics produced by this nnreality are likely to 
be those who are the real leaders of men: while 
those who slip through are likely to be the un- 
critical followers of others' thought. 

That which does not appeal to us as real does 
not seem to us important. Hence doctrinal dis- 
cussion fails to awaken popular interest. It is 
in vain that any effort is made to electrify doc- 
trines into life which seem remote from the prac- 
tical results of life. On the other hand, those dis- 
cussions of great principles which appear to be 
close to actual destiny are listened to with great 
interest. If the preacher of to-day will go into 
the field of realities, discover the principles which 
are there working, and come forth and announce 
them to the people, he will have a hearing in any 
pulpit, unless perchance the pulpit itself refuses 
to give him admission to it. 

Into some of the theology of our religious 
books fictitious elements have been introduced on 
one side to build a theory, and then another fiction 
is introduced to cancel it, so that the result may 
be somewhere near what the universal sense of 
mankind demands. For an example, in Pope's 
work on ^'Christian Theology" (III, 317) we find 
him saying; *' Children of wrath as belonging to 
the lineage of the first Adam, they are grafted 
into the second. . . . Unholy by nature, they 
are sanctified through baptismal consecration to 
God." This is evidently dealing with imaginary 



32 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

transactions; there is nothing real about it on 
either side. The process of salvation is made a 
sort of arithmetical problem, worked out by some 
second person, without ever touching the actual 
personality of the person who is saved. John 
Jones from the hand of God was a child of God; 
but something happened with which he never had 
anything to do, which subtracted something from 
his acceptable relation to God. But this seems 
rather hard; so something on the other side was 
done, with which also he had nothing to do, which 
restored him to his original relation of accepta- 
bility.* This is a fiction, as needless as it is ir- 
rational. There is no warrant for saying that 
God really is, or ever was, angry with children 
before they had ever done wrong. The concep- 
tion is revoltingly repudiated as dishonoring to 
God by the unbiased judgment of enlightened 
mankind. The author himself very well knows 
this, and hence he invents another fiction to right 
himself in practical results. (I will not insist 

* Luther in his commentary on Galatians says: "And this (no doubt) all the proph- 
ets did foresee in spirit, that Christ should become the greatest transgressor, murderer, 
adulterer, thief, rebel, and blasphemer that ever was or could be in all the world. For 
He being made a sacrifice for the sins of the world, is not now an innocent person and 
without sins. He is not now the Son of God born of the Virgin Mary, but a sinner, which 
hath and carrieth the sin of Paul, who was a blasphemer, an oppressor, and a persecutor; 
of Peter, which denied Christ; of David, which was an adulterer, a murderer, and caused 
the Gentiles to blaspheme the name of the Lord; and briefly, which hath and beareth 
the sins of all men in His body; not that He Himself committeth them, but for that He 
received them being committed or done of us, and laid them upon His own body that 
He might make satisfaction for them with His blood. . . . Our most merciful Father 
. . . sent His only Son into the world, and laid upon Him all the sins of all men, 
saying. Be Thou Peter that denier; Paul that persecutor, blasphemer, and cruel oppres- 
sor; David that adulterer; that sinner that did eat the apple in Paradise; that thief which 
hanged upon the cross; and briefly, be Thou the person which hath committed the sins 
of all men."— (Quoted by W. Hale White: "Bunyan," 98, 99.) 



OBIGINS 33 

that it was his personal invention — for it is hoary 
with age; his responsibility may only be that he 
did not reject it.) It is as profound a fiction as 
was ever conceived to affirm that water baptism 
has anything whatever to do with the moral na- 
ture of a child. It is simply not true. No evi- 
dence for it from life can be produced. No ra- 
tional necessity for it can be shown. I will not 
undertake to prove this negative position. Like 
any other axiomatic position, it is impossible to 
make its offensiveness to truth and justice any 
clearer to him that does not see it. But one in- 
ference from the position it is worth our while 
to arraign. If baptism is necessary to arrange 
children's relation with God, then those children 
whose parents are too negligent to attend to their 
baptism remain under the wrath of God. This 
horrible conclusion might have gained a standing 
in the darkest Middle Ages, and may still occa- 
sionally be heard among those who have not 
moved entirely out of the twilight; but it is so 
nearly extinct, and its death-gasps are so nearly 
inaudible that there is no motive in striking it 
another blow, unless to quickly end its dying 
misery. We are so far away from it in our 
thought that we are startled when we see the evi- 
dence that it once lived on this side of the At- 
lantic. But there is material evidence of it in 
Copp's Hill Graveyard in Boston, where there is 
a mound raised over the place where the fathers 
buried the little bodies of their unbaptized chil- 

8 



34 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

dren. The superstition was so cruel that they be- 
lieved that the very dust of their loved babies was 
so vile with original sin that it could not share 
the consecrated places where other dust, that had 
had a little water ceremonially sprinkled upon it, 
rested! I here record the revolt of my nature 
against this misuse of children's baptism. In an- 
other place I shall give reason for my unquali- 
fied approval of its rational and useful observ- 
ance. (See Chap. XL) 

Obiginal Sin and the Vikgin Birth. 

It has been thought possible that the story of 
the virgin birth of Jesus has had some relation 
to the assumed sinfulness of the act of human 
procreation. On the affirmatory side of that con- 
clusion are the following considerations: 

1. Those who accept that account would ex- 
plain some of the silences of some current nar- 
ratives by the supposition that it was a subject 
that would not be talked about until after Jesus 
was worshiped. One writer (Garvie : ^^ Inner Life 
of Jesus," p. 90) thinks that it may have been 
*^only after the death of the mother of Jesus" — 
hence long after the death of Jesus Himself — that 
it came to be more openly spoken about. Con- 
cerning this it should be noted: unless it was 
known and used to establish the Deity of Jesus, 
the record of it was needless. If it came to be 
spoken of only after Jesus was regarded the Son 
of God, it is difficult to see why the account was 



OEIGINS 35 

not altogether superfluous, in the thought of any 
other age than one that regarded natural pro- 
creation as sinful. 

There were two persons to whom, if for any 
one, the knowledge of the supernatural conception 
was important, viz., Mary and Jesus. Yet those 
who seem to think it an important link in the 
establishment of Christ's Deity, think it was not 
an appropriate subject to be communicated to 
Jesus even when He was twelve years of age and 
had arrived at some degree of divine conscious- 
ness. They seem prone to put off the necessity 
of that information until Jesus had come to the 
Messianic consciousness by the direct operation 
or suggestion of the Spirit. But one is bound to 
ask. If not used to communicate and establish 
that consciousness; if that consciousness is pos- 
sible by other means, of what value is the com- 
munication then? Is it needed to confirm the 
other communication, as if that in itself were 
doubtful? We feel much like insisting that the 
communication of the Holy Spirit to the con- 
sciousness of Jesus was so immeasurably more 
sure than any assurance coming through human 
channels concerning an event long past could pos- 
sibly be, that the latter is not to be mentioned as 
a ground of assurance of His divine nature for 
Him. 

Further, the importance of the knowledge of 
this event to Mary rests on the part that she 
would have in establishing by testimony to it the 



36 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

divinity of lier Son. If now we suppose that she 
never so used it, and that it was used only after 
her death, we have destroyed its value for her, 
and hence for others. 

If the value of the account to these two is thus 
eliminated, there remains no value in it except to 
the apologist, and for him it rests upon the false 
assumption, as we contend, of the doctrine of 
hereditary sin in normal human nature. If Mary 
is not the witness that established the fact, it 
clearly is in the region of speculation, the motive 
of which is to relieve Jesus of the taint of orig- 
inal sin. 

2. From a biological point of view this story 
is of trivial importance in any age which knows 
the process of the origin of a physical human life. 
It is a physical fact that is to be accounted for 
in any possible supposition, and the alleged vir- 
ginal conception in any case can account only for 
an animal life which is to be used by a spiritual 
being. That God should use one physical agency 
rather than another has no significance whatever 
as to the nature of the spiritual being, who shall 
instrumentally use the animal nature thus pro- 
iduced. 

Concerning the ascetic tendency which may 
have been a factor in the origin of the story, 
Garvie (op. cit. 93) says: *^The ascetic tendency 
to depreciate marriage and to exalt celibacy did 
undoubtedly find encouragement in the belief in 
the virginity of the mother of Jesus. But this 



OEIGINS 37 

ascetic tendency appeared in the Christian Clinrch 
at a later period than the narratives of the birth 
of Jesns. If it had had any connection with the 
origin of these narratives it would have been at 
pains so to tell the story as to put Mary's per- 
petual virginity beyond doubt or question, 
whereas the impression conveyed in the Gospels 
is that after the birth of Jesus, Mary lived with 
Joseph in wedlock. It is now generally agreed 
that the stories of the infancy are of undoubtedly 
Jewish origin, and in Judaism marriage was not 
depreciated, but regarded as honorable." 

It is evident from the reasoning of certain 
authors that this matter of the virgin birth has 
something to do with the sinlessness of Jesus. It 
may be that that is its real if not entire signifi- 
cance in their minds. To quote again from Gar- 
vie, who may stand for many others who thus 
reason. He says (op. cit. 98) : **It is also certain 
that there is no other human personality, except 
Jesus, in which a hereditary tendency to sin and 
distrust has not appeared. It is a fact beyond 
question that all children are born members of 
a sinful race, and have been tainted from their 
source (italics ours). A sinless and godly devel- 
opment appears impossible for all who are com- 
pletely, by natural generation, incorporated in the 
human race. . . . While it would be rash and 
bold dogmatism to affirm that, had Jesus been 
born naturally, He must have displayed the in- 
herited defects of the race, as we can conjecture 



38 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

that divine grace might have acted prior to 
thought and will so as to suppress all hostile ele- 
ments to a perfect moral and religious develop- 
ment; yet as a supernatural mode of birth is 
ascribed to Him in records, the witness of which 
to His words and works secures our credit and 
commands our respect, it is not a vain imagina- 
tion, but a good reason to connect these charac- 
teristics of His personality with this unique fea- 
ture of His birth." The drift of the thought of 
this writer is easily seen: Jesus was sinless, be- 
cause He was procreated in a unique way. But 
it remains to ask, Did Mary transmit to Jesus 
real human nature? If not, what is to be our es- 
timate of the Incarnation fact? If she did, what 
has this unique birth to do with the fact of His 
sinlessness, if we assume, as does this author 
above, that all real human beings are sinful? 
Would it not be more to the point if we should 
account for His sinlessness from the birth of His 
spirit? (Our own view of the distinction of the 
birth of the spirit from that of the body is set 
forth in a later chapter, Vid. chapter III. It is 
only necessary here to suggest that it is not iden- 
tical with the fleshly birth.) Garvie makes a 
strong reply to himself when he says: *^It seems 
to the writer unfortunate that the term virgin 
birth throws so great emphasis on the absence of 
the paternal function, as though the maternal 
function under normal conditions were not as 
liable to be the channel of hereditary taint, or as 



QEIGINS 39 

though it were the union of two functions, that 
caused the transmission of evil." (Op. cit. 99.) 
How inconsistent are they who admit that Joseph 
was competent to be the instructor and governor 
of the child Jesus, but not to be His physical fa- 
ther, and yet allow that to be the spiritual father 
of a child is a much higher function than that of 
being his physical father! We believe that we 
are marching rapidly toward that day when the 
spiritual will take a primary place in life and be 
emancipated from the hitherto dominance of the 
physical. 

A further examination of this particular 
author, and possibly of others who draw similar 
conclusions, would show that he entirely mistakes 
the part which heredity plays, as when, for exam- 
ple, he speaks of Jesus inheriting from His 
mother ''faith in, and surrender to, God." We 
shall show later on that moral and spiritual, in- 
dividual as distinguished from race, qualities are 
not transmissible by heredity. (Vid. chapter 
VH.) Nor is he scientifically justified when he 
says (p. 105): ''The pre-natal influence of the 
mother on the child was a channel of grace, con- 
firming the tendency of faith." 

Finally, the question may be considered to 
have bearings in three directions: (1) The in- 
tegrity of the manuscripts. That is a question 
for the lower or textual critics to decide. (2) The 
influence of the doctrine of hereditary sin in the 
origin of the account in the Gospels. That ques- 



40 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

tion the higher critics may decide. (3) The the- 
ological bearing of the account. That is simply 
nothing. The theologian may look on in serene 
indifference while the question is being settled by 
the two sets of scholars mentioned, knowing that 
the doctrine of the Sonship of Jesus is not in- 
volved in the least degree. As already stated, it 
may not always have been a matter of indiffer- 
ence to the theologian. There may have been a 
time when everything from his point of view 
seemed to hang from it. But to emphasize this 
fact is only playing into the hands of the higher 
critic, who may claim, if the case is made strong 
enough, that the story is accounted for by that 
fact. It may still be a matter of weight, although 
involved in much difficulty, to the theologian who 
has inherited a scientific doctrine, now quite gen- 
erally repudiated, that a spiritual or moral qual- 
ity is a subject of heredity. It may still seem im- 
portant to those who pin their faith to the mar- 
velous and the extraordinary; but to him that 
believes that all processes of nature, common and 
extraordinary alike, are equally manifestations 
of the divine, and may be used by God as the in- 
strument of His plans, it can not matter how this 
controversy is settled. His faith can be adjusted 
with equal ease to either solution, not because he 
has a spirit of indifference; but rather because 
he has the vision of God as filling all in all. Our 
contention is not an effort to eliminate the virgin 
birth as a part of the creed; we have no interest 



OEIGINS 41 

in that. But we do find it necessary to divorce 
from that belief the assumption that the sinless- 
ness of Jesus depends upon it. For such a con- 
clusion it is an entirely illogical premise and is 
utterly inadequate. From the point of view of 
transmissible hereditary sin, if Mary is the sole 
human parent of Jesus, for such a sequence she 
must be removed from the class of the sinful. 
Eoman Catholic theologians were entirely logical 
in seeing the necessity of the doctrine of the Im- 
maculate Conception of Mary, and then of her 
mother Anna, and all down the line of her an- 
cestry, if they would be thorough. If the doctrine 
of Original sin makes the virgin birth a necessity 
to faith, there will be exactly the same necessity 
for the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of 
Mary and her ancestry. 



CHAPTER II 

THE CHILD AS A FACT GIVEN BY NATUKE 

With the above criticism of the traditional the- 
ological doctrine, we prefer now to turn away 
from this method of investigation to the trne sci- 
entific method of recording what we actually see 
in the child as a fact of nature. 

We will avoid the exegetical method for sev- 
eral reasons: 1. It would involve an estimate of 
the point of view of Biblical writers, after the 
methods of the Higher Criticism ; e. g., What must 
be said of Psalm 51:5, ^^ Behold, I was brought 
forth in iniquity; and in sin did my mother con- 
ceive mef Is it scientific prose; or poetic emo- 
tion? Is it a doctrinal enunciation; or the out- 
burst of a penitent heart concerning an individual 
experience? We fancy that the outcome of such 
an examination would be somewhat affected by 
the personal equation. 

2. The history of exegesis has shown that pre- 
vious views have the deciding influence in exe- 
getical balances, where Scripture passages, seem- 
ingly in opposition, can be quoted on both sides. 
So from the Biblical side I satisfy myself with re- 

42 



THE CHILD AS GIVEN BY NATUEE 48 

calling the words of Jesus, * ^ Of such is the King- 
dom of heaven/' as equally weighty with any- 
thing that can be quoted against them, and pass 
to what I believe a more decisive method of in- 
vestigation.* Until the data and methods of exe- 
gesis are more correctly defined it will hardly be 
a sufficient method of settling even theological 
questions. The age-long controversy concerning 
the method of baptism, which bade fair to be 
eternal on the battlefield of exegesis, received its 
quietus when ^ ^ The Teaching of the Twelve Apos- 
tles" was discovered or recovered from its long 
hiding. An ounce of fact is worth a ton of argu- 
ment. 



* We may anticipate the probability that those who regard us in error in rejecting 
the doctrine of Original Sin will bring forward some of the passages of Scripture that 
have bfeen used to perpetuate that doctrine. Our limits do not permit us to take up 
those passages in detail and show them harmonious with our position. We can only 
say that we feel that our Scriptural authority is sufficient in building on this saying of 
Jesus — "of such is the Kingdom of heaven." No possible interpretation of these words 
can leave standing the doctrine that children are sinful when born. If now some one 
is able to show that other passages of Scripture are incompatible with it, while not inter- 
ested in making Scripture thus contradict itself, we are not moved from our standpoint by 
it. In case of a contradiction between Jesus andsomeotheror many other Scripture writers, 
we stand by the word of Jesus as invincible authority. In case of an apparent contra- 
diction, as by the words of David — "in sin did my mother conceive me" — we would 
seek if possible some explanation that would not make out such a direct contradiction 
between Jesus and David, such as: this passage is an expression of extreme emotion 
and not intended as a statement of universal application; it is a poetical statement, and 
must not be interpreted as prose, etc. Our motive would be to relieve Scripture of con- 
tradiction, and it would never occur to us that even several such passages would make 
it necessary to conclude that Jesues was mistaken in a statement so very simple, whose 
meaning is incontrovertible, and whose interpretation can not be twisted in support of 
the doctrine which we renounce. In other words, a clear word of Jesus is of such pre- 
eminent authority that it can not be overthrown by any number of other writers, even 
writers in the Scriptures themselves. Furthermore, if we have found an unmistakable 
teaching of Jesus, why must we seek further light in an age admittedly dark? For pur- 
poses of corroboration, it is needless; for purposes of refutation, it is futile; it could only 
be useful when the word of Jesus was of uncertain meaning. 



M MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

What Does the Book of Life Tell Us of a Child 
AT THE Time of Its Enteance Into the World 1 

That book presents us with an animal, indis- 
tinguishable up to this point from the other ani- 
mals that inhabit the earth. I now quote at large 
from Prof. Edward Porter St. John, who is an 
authority good enough in science and religion to 
have his findings in the Sunday School Journal. 

*^ Every human being begins his existence in 
the form of a one-celled germ, which is anatom- 
ically and biologically very like the lowest forms 
of animal life that are known. Later the embryo 
takes on a wormlike character. This is followed 
at about the third week of development by what 
embryologists universally call the fish stage. The 
body is elongated, there are four finlike limbs, the 
lungs appear only as a bladder-like rudiment, and 
the neck is furnished with gill slits. There are 
other resemblances in the shape of the brain and 
face. 

**At about the beginning of the third month 
the gills have disappeared, the lungs have de- 
veloped, and the limbs have taken on marked char- 
acteristics of reptilian life. At the fourth month 
the spine has the double curve of the lower verte- 
brates. In the sixth month the whole body, except 
the palms of the hands and the soles of the feet 
and a few other small spots, is covered with a fine, 
dark hair, known as the lanugo. The direction of 



THE CHILD AS GIVEN BY NATUEE 45 

the growth of this hair on varions parts of the 
body is precisely like that on the corresponding 
parts of the bodies of apes and monkeys; for 
example, from the shonlder to the elbow the hair 
points down, from the wrist to the elbow the di- 
rection is reversed. This hair usually falls off 
before birth, though occasionally it persists on 
the scalp for some time, to be replaced later by 
the growth that is characteristic of men. 

'^At about this time the hands and the feet 
of the fetus are practically alike, the great toe 
being shorter than the others and projecting at 
an angle, as in the case of apes. Through several 
of the stages the fetus has a clearly defined tail, 
and at one period it is longer than the legs, as 
in some of the highest mammals. Throughout 
these various stages of prenatal development the 
brain and the nervous system show very close 
likeness to those of the animals of the correspond- 
ing levels. 

'^Even at birth the body of the child in some 
particulars resembles that of the ape more than 
that of the adult man. ... In some of the early 
instincts the likeness between the child and the 
lower animals is quite marked. Especially re- 
markable is the fact that for a few weeks, begin- 
ning a few hours after birth, the child will sup- 
port its entire weight for periods lasting from a 
few seconds to nearly two minutes by clinging 
with the hands to a cane or similar object. The 
power to do this is soon lost, and does not re- 



46 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

appear until a much later period.'' {Sunday 
School Journal, 1910.) 

I have made this extended quotation to show 
that this child is so evidently related to other ani- 
mals thus far in its history that we are justified 
in calling it an animal, unless there are other rev- 
elations that make it transcend the animal king- 
dom. Are there such evidences! 

It is perhaps quite difficult now for us to con- 
fine our attention to just what we see. We have 
seen other infants grow up to show reason, intelli- 
gence, conscience, imagination, and other marks 
of personality and moral character. It is almost 
inevitable that we think this being has all of these 
quahties, but for the present that it does not know 
how to express them, or that they are in a sort 
of undeveloped state, or — something; we may 
have never explained to ourselves just what. We 
spontaneously think he is a person; he has 
thoughts, if we only knew how to get at them. 
But this is allowing imagination, and not obser- 
vation, to form our convictions. The child is what 
we see; we have no good right to read into him 
what we have seen developed into other children 
that had the same kind of beginning. It would 
require much marshaling of technical authorities 
to prove this in detail. I do not feel called upon 
to prove a negative, but simply to call attention 
to what the living child testifies. This little be- 
ing has no morals ; he has not even thoughts ; he 
can not see objects or discern colors; he has not 



THE CHILD AS GIVEN BY NATURE 47 

even perception, much less conceptions or ideas. 
''Infancy is mental vacuity. Human life makes 
its appearance wholly destitute of intellectual con- 
tent. And not only is there the absence of knowl- 
edge, but also of the power of knowing. Mind 
potentially is a substantial foundation of powers 
and ideas, but at first there are neither ideas nor 
powers. ' ' (L. R. Fiske : ' ' Man Building, ' ' 251-2.) 
If the above can be said of the mental powers 
of the child, much more may it be said of the 
moral powers. Infancy is moral vacuity. Human 
life makes its appearance wholly destitute of 
moral content. The conscience, or moral nature 
of a child, is a vessel, indeed ; but it is absolutely 
empty at birth of moral ideas and of moral char- 
acter, either in the form of merit or demerit. 
The view of De Pressense is as follows: '^Man 
begins with purely instinctive life, without any 
clear consciousness of itself. In this phase the 
individuality, the ego, the person, exists only in 
germ, and is not separable from indistinct im- 
pressions of which it is vaguely the subject. This 
instinctive life makes man in the first stage of 
his existence closely akin to the animal, though 
there are already indications of the essential dif- 
ference which will ultimately appear between 
them. . . . It is governed by the sensations, af- 
fected and modified by them, and apparently sub- 
merged, like the swimmer who can not lift his 
head above the rapid stream that is carrying him 
along. He does not truly know, because he does 



4:8 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

not clearly distinguish himself from the object 
affecting him. Instinctive knowledge is then only- 
sensation more or less confnsed. The will, at this 
stage, is nothing but an impulse urging on to a 
blind movement, under the influence of the in- 
stinctive feeling which makes man seek the pleas- 
ant and avoid the painful." (''A Study of Ori- 
gins," 251, 252.) He sums up the activities of 
the soul in the three faculties : to know, to love, 
to will. The infant has none of these faculties in 
exercise. He is classified as a human being, not 
because of the manifestation of either of these 
or of any other faculty distinctly human, but 
solely because of his birth from human parents 
and the known development of other beings like 
him. The infant has few instincts, and these in- 
complete, but he has an enormous capacity to 
learn. 

" The baby new to earth and sky, 

What time his tender palm is prest 
Against the circle of the breast, 
Has never thought that ' this is 1/ 

But as he grows he gathers much, 
And learns the use of 'I' and 'me,' 
And finds *I am not what I see, 

And othsr than the things I touch.' 

So rounds he to a separate mind 
From whence clear memory may begin, 
* As thro' the frame that binds him in 

His isolation grows defined." 

— Tennyson: In Memoriam. XLV. 



THE CHILD AS GIVEN BY NATURE 49 

What, Then, Is This New-boen Baby? 

He is not a moral being. He is not even an 
intellectual being. If we say he is an animal, 
what is implied in that statement? It wonld be 
quite beside onr present purpose to describe his 
muscular and anatomical construction. But it is 
not so far from our purpose to say that he is a 
nervous organization. All his present reactions 
from the outside world are nervous. The first 
nervous response from his new habitat is a gasp 
and a cry that establishes his new respiratory 
method of life. Now and increasingly in the days 
just ahead of him there are various actions of 
which he is capable, but they are all nervous re- 
sponses to outward stimuli, plus certain inherited 
reflexes, which are generally known as instinctive 
tendencies. He does nothing as the result of 
thought. He does nothing as the result of willing, 
and consequently he does nothing as the product 
of a malicious will or an evil disposition. Never- 
theless we will hear longheaded observers pointr 
ing out soon the evidences of his fallen nature. 
They will observe that he is mad. They will soon 
see that he is stubborn, etc. And they can point 
out numerous indications very soon that he is 
acting in the way he does in consequence of the 
sin of Adam. 

Before we leave the child under this Adamic 
condemnation, let us observe a kitten. How many 
days after its birth will it be before it spits at 

4 



50 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

you when you act upon it in a way that it does 
not like. Can it not show a pretty good case of 
cat-stubbornness and strike-hach-a-tive-ness, while 
the child as yet is quite innocent of such action? 
Is it sin in the kitten? Is it the evil nature within 
it resulting from the transgression of some primi- 
tive Adamic cat? If this is absurd, why on simi- 
lar evidence do we condemn the child 1 Before the 
dawn of reason and of the moral sense, is there 
anything culpable in a being that is nothing more 
than a nervous machine acting in a manner that 
tends to self-preservation? At this stage, is not 
self-defensive reaction the only virtue it can dis- 
play? For the time divine wisdom can do noth- 
ing more for it. 

I am sure that I shall be more than pardoned 
for introducing the following words, so illumina- 
tive of this point, from Prof. Edward Porter St. 
John. He says; **In the early selfishness, which 
later gives way to altruism, we gain another 
glimpse of nature's way of working. . . . One 
must get before he can give, and so she bends her 
energies at first of all to the building up of a 
strong personality, which shall be able to serve 
another generation. There are certain large 
moths in which the caterpillar stage lasts for 
weeks or months, during which time the insect 
lives to eat; in the adult stage, when they have 
acquired wings, they take no food at all, and live 
simply to prepare for the next generation. Here 
is nature's parable of the spiritual life. Here is 



THE CHILD AS GIVEN BY NATUEE 51 

the biological explanation of the unselfishness of 
parents — and of the selfishness of children as well. 

**Bnt in the egoism of the child we can see 
more than this of nature's plans ; for she is never 
inconsistent with herself, and the development of 
morality is one of her chief concerns. Not only 
is it true that morality does not suffer from the 
natural selfishness of the child, but it is really 
dependent upon it. In the development of almost 
every one of its elements we can trace an egoistic 
or selfish stage. The child feels resentment for 
a wrong done to himself. If it were not so, how 
could he ever feel indignation for a wrong done 
to another? The boy is not content with simply 
exhibiting his own attainments; he must outdo 
another. The self-feeling which now finds ex- 
pression in rivalry, will, by and by, manifest itself 
in the positive form of self-respect and the nega- 
tive form of humility, which seem more admirable 
traits. But how can he ever feel humility unless 
he measures himself by another! And how can 
he so well gain his standards of self-respect as 
by comparing himself with one who has reached 
the higher level? Until a child has built up a 
feeling of ownership in property that is his own, 
how can he learn to sympathetically regard the 
property rights of another? Surely God has not 
blundered in shaping the soul of a child." (Sun- 
day School Journal, 1910, p. 487.) 

The fact is that many things are charged 
against the child sheerly because he can not de- 



52 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

fend himself against tlie slander, and has to re- 
ceive, under adult promises of punishment if he 
should talk back, many unpleasant conclusions. 
A little girl one day in tears said to her mother, 
*^When you do that, it 's nervous; when I do it, 
it 's naughty/' In fact, this is just the reverse 
of the truth. An adult with a developed con- 
science and power of self-control can not do cer- 
tain things without moral condemnation, which a 
child might do as the reaction of a nervous or- 
ganization against an unpleasant stimulus, with- 
out feeling any sense of wrong. This little nerv- 
ous organism, a full-blooded member of the ani- 
mal kingdom, and only a candidate for the human 
kingdom, can not commit a sinful act until there 
is within him, given by some process profoundly 
mysterious, a standard of righteousness and ap- 
prehension of a Person whose rights are violated 
by the action. As yet there is not in the child 
the first gleam of such a standard, nor the re- 
motest possibility of perceiving such a Person. 
How meaningless, then, to speak of his sinfulness, 
when he has not the most incipient power of sin ! 
How can they be essentially sinful in origin 
of whom one can so beautifully and truthfully 
say: ^^The breath of God breathes in them and 
through them upon our concerns. Motherhood 
dawns when they appear, and the inexpressible 
sanctity and tenderness and charm that wait upon 
their arrival are the cardinal blessings of life in 
its diviner aspects. Let nothing rob us of this 



THE CHILD AS GIVEN BY NATUEE 53 

humanness wliich proceeds from the Everlasting 
Father; permit nothing to make us forget that 
every life bom of a woman is a visible expression 
of the life of God. Whatever in onr race is up- 
lifting and most worthy, its strength, its peren- 
nial honor, its divine likeness and growth, depend 
alike on childhood." (Dr. S. P. Cadman in Brook- 
lyn Eagle.) 

But one replies, *'The child has a sinful na- 
ture. ' ' 

This word '^nature" is made to do large work 
in the world. Upon its very vague and indefinite 
corporosity are piled many a burden of logic, 
theology, and philosophy. What do people mean 
by a sinful nature or fallen nature, which latter 
term is used to convey the same meaning? Is a 
sinful nature a nature that sins ? No ; it can not 
be that : for we have seen that the infant can not 
sin. Well, then, it may be said that a sinful na- 
ture is one that will develop into a nature that 
will sin. This puts sinfulness back in the order 
of nature where there is no volition, no moral 
choosing; back into the causal order of things 
where there are no alternatives ; back in the iron 
grip of powers that can not be other than they 
are, and for which no one but God, who made 
them so, is responsible. If there is one heresy 
in the world more heretical than another, it is 
the heresy that makes God the author of sin. 
Moreover, there is absolutely no logical necessity 
for this assumption of the sinfulness of human 



54: MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

nature, as it comes from the hand of God. The 
well-known and easily observable facts concern- 
ing the child furnish all the conditions for all the 
actualizations of its after-life. 

The infant is an animal. It is not sinful for 
an infant to be an animal and to act as an animal. 
But it is sinful for an infant forever to remain 
an animal, and after reason and conscience have 
arrived to act as an animal. This child is an 
organization of physical nerves to-day; but to- 
morrow, by some process, mysterious under any 
theory of his life, he will be a rational, a moral 
human spirit, without losing one of his appetites 
or fleshly passions or nervous impulses. To-day 
he can not act differently from what he does act, 
under any possibility within his control; but to- 
morrow he may go to the right or to the left, up 
or down, in any direction in which his animalism 
impels him, or in the direction in which his higher 
spiritual nature draws. The animalism of his 
condition accounts for all the facts of action and 
tendency, impulse and spiritual struggle that the 
assumed sinful nature accounted for. The ani- 
mal nature, which is undisputed, provides the field 
of moral and spiritual conflict that will last as 
long as life lasts. In this struggle there is no 
sin implied, but a condition which may issue in 
sin at any moment that the person may so decide ; 
but which will never so issue of necessity, never 
unless and until he so decides. To overcome the 
animal, subdue the animal, rise triumphant above 



THE CHILD AS GIVEN BY NATURE 55 

the animal, is life's problem of personal char- 
acter. 

In the straggle with animalism, as in the tra- 
ditional struggle with inbred sin, there is no per- 
sonal deliverance and victory except through 
God 's aid, which is graciously offered to all, and 
by it sinning is destroyed as a necessity. 

It is not the problem of spiritual life to kill 
this animal, which God gave us at birth. It was 
God's first gift, and unmistakably represents His 
goodness and wisdom. But it was never given 
us as representing man's final condition; rather 
it is only the starting-point of life. As such it 
has nothing but an impelling force. It can not see 
the way for a man; it can not appreciate the 
worth of a man ; it can not choose the way or the 
destiny of a man. It, then, needs control, limita- 
tion, denial, guidance. The moral problem of 
life, as related to the animal nature, is contained 
in these actions of mastery by the rational na- 
ture.* We are never to attempt to destroy any 
animal impulse, much less to claim that by the 
power of God's grace any animal impulse has 
been destroyed. These impulses are not sinful. 
Life under grace tends to their strength and 
health rather than to their weakness and nega- 

* "Men, it is true, no longer believe in the devil's agency; at least, they no longer 
believe in the power of calling up the devil and transacting business with him; other- 
wise there would be hundreds of such stories as that of Faust. But the spirit which 
created the story and rendered it credible to all Europe remains unchanged. . . . We 
do not make compacts, but we throw away our lives; we have no tempter face to face 
with us, offering illimitable powers in exchange for our futurity; but we have our own 
desires, imperious, insiduous, and for them we barter our existence — for one moment's 
pleasure risking years of anguish." — (Lewes: "Life of Goethe," II, 270.) 



56 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

tion. Their destruction is not sanctification, as 
many suppose; but is rather the retributive effect 
of their unrestrained abuse. They are to be used 
and mastered in the interest of the rational life, 
under the over-guidance of divine law and pur- 
pose, by the assistance of the Divine Spirit. 

It is an ordinary assumption that sin inheres 
in the flesh. Writers who treat of the nature of 
Jesus argue that it was necessary for His per-> 
sonality to have a fleshly nature in which there is 
no taint. Says one writer: ^'How much more, 
then, in the nature of things, is it necessary that 
He who came to redeem men from sin should Him- 
self be without sin in His own flesh ! An immacu- 
late spirit demands an immaculate organism." 
(Cooke: ^^Incarnation and Eecent Criticism,'' 
147.) What can this mean? It is hard to an- 
swer, unless we assume that the absence of sin 
in the flesh will be evidenced by the absence of 
fleshly appetite, passion, impulse. But such an 
absence is not purity, it is mutilation, destruction 
of the bodily function in one form or another. It 
is something that has no analogy or suggestion in 
the experience of Christians. The Christian who 
attains the highest degree and experience of pu- 
rity does not thereby lose any animal appetite 
or passion; he receives only such a spiritual en- 
dowment that he is able completely to control 
them. This control is the vital and sufficient thing 
in a member of our race. Not absence of conflict, 
but victory, is human excellence. This demand 



THE CHILD AS GIVEN BY NATUEE 57 

for the elimination of passion and appetite, usu- 
ally prejudged by being called '^ sinful appetites 
and passions," arises probably from the assump- 
tion that animal appetites and passions are in 
themselves sinful. But this throws the burden of 
sinfulness back on to God, who alone is respon- 
sible for human nature in this form, and who in 
the beginning pronounced them good. 

A little reflection will bring the conviction that 
sin is a moral thing; a something where choice 
is involved ; something which pertains to the will 
and the spirit; something which is not grounded 
in a nature ; not an unavoidable, normal impulse ; 
not a thing for the elminiation of which no pro- 
vision is made by grace through faith in Jesus. 
Sin has a moral remedy; but appetite and pas- 
sion have none except drugs and the surgeon's 
knife. 

Have we, then, merely substituted one term for 
another — the term animalism for sin! Is this all 
a discussion about words? I think that can 
hardly be said. The whole conception has been 
changed. The traditional view had a sin on its 
hand for which there was no rational cause, either 
human or divine. The human causation, Adam's 
primeval sin, always involved injustice, confusion 
of moral conceptions, and an irrational philoso- 
phy. It has long been rejected by scientific minds. 
The assumed divine causation reflected on the 
goodness and equity of God, and should be given 
up in the interest of divine honor, even if we 



58 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

are left without any means of accounting for the 
moral history of the individual. Our explana- 
tion, on the other hand, throws back no great 
burden of responsibility on the first man; allows 
the wisdom, the goodness, and the justice of God 
to stand unchallenged, and at the same time af- 
fords every datum of explanation of the subse- 
quent history of the child that the traditional 
view possessed. And it does much more : it allows 
us to use physical descriptions of physical condi- 
tions, and reserves to us the word *'sin" for ap- 
plication to a fact purely moral and spiritual. It 
gives us a rational and possible basis for a life 
of struggle, which no man ever could avoid, what- 
ever his professions and claims, which life God 
can smile upon and reward. It gives an expli- 
cable view of the sanctified life, which, under the 
supposition that animal propensity was sin, was 
made impossible and absurd. These are not small 
contributions to an explanation of our spiritual 
life and its reconciliation with our actual life in 
the body. Moreover, it creates no difficulties to 
offset its gains, unless it be the straightening out 
of some exegesis based on the materialistic view 
of sin. Having meditated much upon it, I know 
of no Scripture that may not be explained in an 
atmosphere of candor, although there are several 
that may be quoted in a controversial spirit. 



CHAPTEE III 



THE BIETH OF THE SPIEIT 



Has tHe child a soul? Lotze places the proof of 
a soul in the possession of a unity of conscious- 
ness. The test seems to be that a being having a 
soul (or a rational spirit) is one that recognizes 
itself as one being, or the experiences which it 
has as belonging to its one self. It is doubtful if 
the child can stand this test. His reactions 
against the external world are purely nervous. 
The nerves feel pain, but the child is not conscious 
of a pained self. His hands and feet are as ex- 
ternal to his consciousness as any other objects 
he may see. To say that he has a potential soul, 
a something that will come to unity of conscious- 
ness soon, may be true enough. It is immaterial 
to our discussion, and its investigation would lead 
us far afield. It is enough to notice that such a 
soul is of no value to his present constitution of 
moral character. 

That the new-born child has an animal soul, 
a forming principle which builds his body and 
animates it, is beyond question. As much pos- 
sibly can be said for the cell which was its start- 
ing-point of being. But that he has not a ra- 

59 



60 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

tional mind, rendering Mm capable of moral ac- 
tion, is almost as indisputable as that the cell 
had not. The relation between these two, the cell 
and the rational nature, constitutes one of the 
most interesting and intricate problems of human 
life. Whether the Bible holds to a tripartite or 
dual nature for man is, I believe, an unsolved 
puzzle. According to Franz Delitsch, in his great 
work, '* Biblical Psychology, ' ' (103), the Scrip- 
tures make a sharp distinction between flesh and 
spirit, and yet the flesh is endowed with soul. 
This soul of flesh the child has; but there is as 
yet no exhibition of the spirit. When is this 
higher spirit born I 

Evolutionary philosophy can not furnish us 
an answer. There are two things for which Evo- 
lution has no explanation, nor can it give us the 
slightest hint concerning their origin. They are : 
the origin of life and the origin of spirit. Many 
attempts have been made to deduce life from mat- 
ter ; but they have always been unsuccessful, and 
for the time being, at least, they are now definitely 
abandoned. Just as little can Evolution account 
for the introduction of spirit. This task, then, 
we may place beyond human power to perform. 
We can not, apart from revelation, give any ac- 
count of the origin of the human spirit. Its ex- 
istence we accept as a fact ; the evidences of it are 
abundant ; but whence and how it came to be we 
have nothing to say, except that the Bible says 
we are sons of God, If Traducianism be true, that 



THE BIRTH OF THE SPIRIT 61 

the spirit of the child is derived from the spirits 
of the parents, we might assume that it originated 
at conception; though the assumption would not 
be compelled and in itself is very difficult. If the 
origin of the spirit is subsequent to conception 
and previous to birth, it then seems a necessity 
of belief that the child 's spirit is derived from its 
mother, but not from its father. The difficulties 
that gather about Traducianism seem to make it 
an almost impossible belief. On the other hand, 
if we accept the doctrine of Creationism, that each 
human spirit is a direct creation of the Divine 
Spirit, the time of its origin may fall within a 
wide range. 

When the spirit is born, is about as easy to 
answer as where it is located, a question which 
has been one of the puzzles of philosophers, little 
and big, of all ages. If I am not mistaken, Joseph 
Cook lectured on this subject in his Boston course 
more than thirty years ago. But I do not remem- 
ber that he solved the mystery. 

The pre-existence of the spirit as pictured by 
Wordsworth in the following lines, is a beautiful 
poetic conception; but hardly needs serious dis- 
cussion. Its truth or untruth is outside the limits 
of our investigation. 

'' Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And Cometh from afar ; 

Not in entire forgetfulness. 
And not in utter nakedness, 



62 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God, who is our home: 

Heaven lies about us in our infancy ; 
Shades of the prison house begin to close 

Upon the growing boy, 
But he beholds the light and whence it flows. 

He sees it in his joy ; 
The youth whom daily farther from the east 
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, 
And by the vision splendid 
Is on his way attended ; 
At length the man perceives it die away ; 
And fade into the light of common day." 

(Wordsworth: "Ode to Immortality," V.) 

The uncritical, no doubt, assume tliat a child 
is born with a rational spirit and may lift their 
eyebrows in astonishment that such a position 
could ever be questioned. But such persons would 
be at their wits ' end if they should be asked when 
the spirit became identified with the child's body. 
Was it when it was a single cell! Was it when 
it was in the fish stage 1 or in the reptilian stage I 
or the simian stage? Did it come to it at its first 
gasp for breath? Did its first cry become the an- 
guish of a human spirit? I fancy that it would 
be rather difficult to reply affirmatively to any 
of these questions, and I, at least, will not have 
the temerity to reply negatively. If we reason 
from the analogy of the origin of the body, and 
suppose that the spirit is not the product of any 
one moment of time, and that only its germinal 
potentiality is given in birth, and that this poten- 
tiality in no wise functions as it does in its com- 
plete manifestation, we may best account for all 



THE BIRTH OF THE SPIEIT 63 

the facts. The ground for assuming this poten- 
tial beginning is admittedly a priori. We can not 
observe in the child any more evidences of spirit 
than we can in the kitten; but we believe it be- 
longs to the genus homo, and if not an idiot, has 
powers which will unfold into spirit-action after 
awhile, and respond to environment as the kitten 
never will. 

Of one thing, however, there can hardly be a 
dispute: at birth the human spirit, if existent at 
all, has not come to its manifestation. So our in- 
quiry may take the form: when does it come to 
manifestation, so as to be clothed with moral 
freedom and human responsibility? For myself 
there are no more rational difficulties in assuming 
that the spirit is coming to its birth than there are 
in assuming that it is coming to its manifestation 
and responsibility. But our purpose is equally 
served with the question in either form. 

A child may profitably be contemplated as 
two selves: his realized self; what he can do. 
This depends upon his past ; what he has learned 
to do. Second, his potential self; what he can 
learn to do and may become. This latter depends 
upon the contribution of others. His potential 
self is not yet bom or actualized. If at birth 
thrown upon his own resources, what he can do 
is quite insignificant. He will never be able to 
talk, and without speech his thought will always 
be infantile and meager. One writer has said that 
he can never be a person unless he mingles with 



64 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

persons. It is certain that he will be so circnm- 
scribed in power, lie will be so nnlike other per- 
sons that we know as snch, that the remark is 
practically true. A new-born babe, henceforth 
cared for by some kind animal, such as the fabled 
wolf which snckled Eomulus and Kemns, and 
never coming in contact with human kind, would 
be such a defective human being, and so much 
like the animals with which he grew up, that there 
would be no suggestion of personality except the 
form of his body. So the real self is the second 
self, which is yet to become after his physical 
birth, and the contribution to his being is chiefly 
through the mother and father who watch over 
him. They are giving birth to him all through 
the years of his developing selfhood. 

In assuming the possibility of a germinal ori- 
gin of the spirit apart from the germinal origin 
of the body, we recognize that we are quite be- 
yond the boundary of the known. However, the 
supposition will be justified if by it we can ra- 
tionalize, even in a small degree, this very mys- 
terious realm. The objections to it seem to be 
bom chiefly from materialism, and make the doc- 
trine of immortality impossible. In our specula- 
tion we are doing much the same as we do after 
the death of the body. It is about as much out- 
side the realm of the known to imagine the spirit 
as existing after the physical dissolution of the 
body as it is to imagine the physical organism 
before birth as not yet inhabited with a spirit. It 



THE BIETH OF THE SPIRIT 65 

is quite as rational to assume that the spirit is 
a separate direct creation of God as it is to believe 
that the spirit ^^ returns to God who gave it^' after 
the body is placed in the grave. If the latter is 
a belief dear to all the world, the former may well 
be used as its harmonious if not inevitable foun- 
dation. 

In the attainment of human condition the child 
has a long way to go — farther than any other ani- 
mal born into the world. There is more differ- 
ence between the infant homo and the adult homo 
than between the infancy and adulthood of any 
other being which comes into the world. Not only 
is the distance to be traveled greater, but there is 
actually to be a translation from one kind of be- 
ing into another, which does not occur with any 
other being subject to birth. Says Major J. W. 
Powell (^^From Barbarism to Civilization," 505, 
p. 97) : *^ Every child is born destitute of things 
possessed in manhood, which distinguishes him 
from the lower animals. Of all industries he is 
artless; of all languages he is speechless; of all 
reasoning he is thoughtless; of all philosophies 
he is opinionless ; but arts, institutions, languages, 
opinions, and mentations he acquires as the years 
go by from childhood to manhood. In all these 
respects the new-born babe is hardly the peer of 
the new-born beast ; but as the years go by, ever 
and ever he exhibits his superiority in all of the 
great classes of activities, until the distance by 
which he is separated from the brute is so great 

5 



66 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

that his realm of existence is in another kingdom 
of nature. * ' 

The prolonged infancy of the child not only 
means that he is born at the foot of the ladder 
and ^^ crawls to maturity'' at a far slower pace 
than any of the animal species; but also that he 
climbs so much higher. The lion is as old at three 
and six years as man is at fifteen and twenty-five, 
and yet it lives to half the total age of the man. 
Its infancy is only one-fifth as long ; its adulthood 
is almost equal. Moreover, this prolonged infancy 
belongs only to those races of men who achieve 
the highest attainments of civilization. The Aleu- 
tian boy is an independent hunter at ten, and may 
marry. In Tahiti, children become practically 
free from parental control at eight, and may set 
up a sort of group life for themselves. (Cham- 
berlain: ^^The Child,'' 53.) Says Tyler: ^^Man 
is a being of extraordinary complexity and of in- 
numerable possibilities. He can rise to the 
heights of wisdom and power of which we as yet 
have little conception, or he can sink lower than 
any brute. He can press upward in the line of 
progress, can stray or straggle from the line of 
march, or stagnate or turn back. He has more 
possibilities of failure than the lower animal, and 
the attractions and allurements to stray from the 
upward course are more numerous and more 
powerful." (''Man in Evolution," 84.) 

Lessing said that ''education was revelation 
coming to the individual man. ' ' Spirit-formation, 



THE BIETH OF THE SPIEIT 67 

if this be trne, is not synonymous with education : 
for the process is not a mere revelation of the out- 
side world; because there are required certain 
subjective changes which condition the incoming 
revelation. At the first the child can take in a 
certain class of impressions only. Before others 
are perceived the very cells of the brain must 
undergo transformation, and the brain come to 
what may be called its human size. The new-born 
child probably does not use the front or intellec- 
tual part of the brain — only the medulla, and per- 
haps only the nervous ganglia at the base of the 
skull. (^^The Child, ^' 81.) If spirit-birth were 
education merely, then the time of its arrival 
might be noted when the child had attained some 
standard arbitrarily fixed. But there are certain 
periods in child development, fixed by nature, and 
they are by no means arbitrarily designated rela- 
tively to an advancing standard. These periods 
are attained and passed whether we note them 
or not, and condition entrance upon the succeeding 
stage. If we know what a human spirit is, and 
how it acts, we can easily determine when it has 
arrived, though we may not have perceived the 
moment of its coming. We can easily distinguish 
between the infantile and dependent being and the 
adult and completely responsible spirit. Nothing 
is more important in the administration of the 
home and the school and the Church than knowl- 
edge of these periods and their appropriate activi- 
ties. Parental responsibility increases as childish 



68 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

irresponsibility is recognized. If the infant has 
not a rational spirit, the parent must discharge 
the functions of the spiritual life for the child. 
If the child of six years has not come to moral re- 
sponsibility, the parent must assume before God 
and the community that responsibility for the 
child, and so on up in diminishing measure until 
the youth has come to the place in life where he 
may bear his moral burdens on his own shoulders. 



CHAPTER IV 

IS THEEE A MOKAL BIAS T^ HUMAE" NATURE ? 

If the question be raised, Is there a bias toward 
sin in hnman nature, as we know it, that is not the 
consequence of actual transgression of law by the 
individual? we can not return an answer in a sim- 
ple word. We eliminate the case of actual per- 
sonal transgression : for it is conceded by all that 
in such a person there has resulted a weakness 
which gives sin the advantage in the contest. 

In answering we must remember that human 
nature is complex — flesh and spirit, with the pro- 
pensities and qualities of each in their various re- 
lations. In dealing with the new-born child we 
have to deal immediately, as we have seen, only 
with the flesh. But as this child is the individual 
that is to become a complete human being, we are 
hardly dealing candidly with the problem unless 
we seek to analyze human nature as it is in its 
developed but normal form. It might be con- 
ceded that the child needs no change of nature, 
but that that concession does not inevitably follow 
concerning the complete human being, who is the 
normal and inevitable development of the child. 
So we must face the question in its application to 



70 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

the Imman being that has arrived at the full form 
of his powers. With this understanding of our 
question, what shall be our answer? 

First, we consider that part of human nature 
which we call the flesh: The animal nature cer- 
tainly does furnish the conditions which make a 
struggle against sin necessary. It is not that sin 
is located in the animal nature, or that its work- 
ings are sinful in themselves. But it grows out 
of the fact that animalism has nothing in it but 
impulse. It has no self -limiting power within it- 
self. It has nothing but a tendency to function or 
a pressure toward gratification. 

Legitimate gratification is not sinful; but the 
flesh does not of itself stop at the line of legiti- 
macy. Its only tendency, when it arrives at that 
line, is to push on. But the passing of that line 
is sin ; and the effort to hold it to that line consti- 
tutes a direct struggle of the spirit with the 
flesh. The sin that occurs from a transgression 
of the boundary is not a sin of the flesh — for the 
flesh can not sin ; but it is a sin of the spirit, whose 
function of regency in the personality has not 
been made good. ^^Sin is no factor of the true 
humanity, but only a feature of empirical human- 
ity which is absolutely fatal to the true. Wliat is 
truly human is not sin, but the power to be 
tempted to sin. It is not perdition, but freedom. ' ^ 
(Forsyth: '^ Person and Place of Jesus Christ," 
302.) 

So we have the paradoxical answer: the ani- 



MOEAL BIAS IN HUMAN NATUEE 71 

mal nature has in it a pnll toward sin; but that 
pull is not a state of sin or an act of sin. The 
state of sin is that condition of personality in 
which the fleshly impulse is enthroned. The de- 
gree of sinfulness of the state is a balance between 
the intensity of the fleshly impulse and the 
strength of the guiding spirit ; just as the degree 
of danger in a horse is the balance between the 
animal spirits of the horse and the strength of the 
driver who guides and restrains him. The 
strength of the first, unmatched by the strength 
of the other, produces a condition of lawlessness 
and wreckage. The act of sin is the transgression 
of the legitimate boundaries of fleshly action. 
Neither state nor act is inevitable from the rela- 
tion of flesh and spirit, the proffered aid of the 
Spirit of God being always assumed. 

The question as it relates itself to the working 
of the spirit is still more intricate. There are cer- 
tain sins that are not the result of the operation 
of the flesh, but are the result of the activities of 
the spirit itself. They are such sins as pride, 
haughtiness, selfishness, self-indulgence, etc. 

By close analysis we will discover that these 
are but the exaggerated form of certain germinal, 
fundamental, personal principles, that are virtues. 
For example, self-respect is a fundamental virtue, 
without which character-building is impossible; 
but the exaggerated forms of this virtue are pride, 
vanity, haughtiness, etc. Paul says: ''For I say 
through grace that was given to me^ to every man 



72 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

that is among you, not to think of himself more 
highly than he ought to think; but so to think as 
to think soberly, according as God has dealt to 
each man a measure of faith." (Rom. 12:3.) 
Here it is clear that Paul allows that one should 
think *^ highly" of himself. Up to that point he 
is virtuous ; but when he passes a certain point he 
becomes vicious. 

Again, self-love is a fundamental virtue, fur- 
nishing the fulcrum for all moral appeal, and 
without it virtue would have no foundation in 
human motive ; it would become a perfectly capri- 
cious thing. The Bible from beginning to end is 
full of appeals to this fundamental and normal 
human element. It is represented as a motive in 
the sacrificial career of Jesus Christ, *^Who for 
the joy that was set before Him endured the 
cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the 
right hand of the throne of God." (Heb. 12: 2.) 
So that we think it is clear that self-love is a 
fundamental excellence in human or even in di- 
vine nature. But its exaggerated working is self- 
ishness, in its manifold forms — a sin so compre- 
hensive that it has been estimated as the one cen- 
tral principle of all sin. 

Eecognizing this distinction between the legiti- 
mate root-form of a principle, which is a virtue, 
and the exaggerated form, which is a sin, are we 
not able to see that here also is ground for a 
struggle within the activities of the spirit itself, 
similar to that which we have seen between the 



MOEAL BIAS IN HUMAN NATURE 73 

flesh and the spirit^ and that the struggle is not 
of itself an indication of a sinfnl condition? The 
human spirit is to seek its welfare as an end of 
its existence; but the manner of the attainment 
of that end, paradoxically enough, is to transfer 
the center of its activities from its own being to 
the heart of God Himself. One must love him- 
self ; but when he looks for the means of promoting 
his welfare, he discovers that it is self-forgetful- 
ness and mindfulness of the glory of God, of His 
Kingdom, and of His other children. This does 
not constitute a contradiction, even though it be 
a paradox. It is simply a revelation of the mar- 
velous wisdom of God in His provision for the 
welfare of myself and my brother at the same 
time by a single action through an altruistic law. 

That discovery, whenever it comes, will pre- 
cipitate a crisis. Until the hour of that discovery 
it can not be said that the direct seeking of our 
individual good is a sin ; it is only a mistake. Now, 
if one shall reject the operation of this altruistic 
law, the identical direct seeking of the good for 
one's self is no longer a mistake; it is a sin. But 
if one yields his self-seeking, he will avoid the sin 
and be lifted out of his mistake. 

If any one shall regard this crisis and its so- 
lution as a conversion, we will have no contro- 
versy. We point out only that the change is a 
change in the spiritual nature, but not of moral 
character. There was no condemnation before; 
there is none after. It is a change that grows 



74 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

ont of spiritual enlightenment and the workings 
of the already inwrought Divine Spirit. It is not 
a turning away from sin to holiness; it is only 
an essential step in holiness, and the life of God's 
children are full of such normal crises. 

Our answer to the whole question, then, is 
somewhat a paradox. In the working of both flesh 
and spirit there is a pull, an impulse that leads 
toward sin, but stops short of it when the higher 
nature recognizes the boundaries where virtue 
ends and sin begins, draws the line and says that 
the movement must end at that line. It is a strug- 
gle with an impulse that, uncontrolled and unlim- 
ited, would end in sin, and thus it is not very 
far wrong to call it a struggle against sin. But 
it ought ever to be remembered that it is not a 
sinful struggle. 

If one would look for a living illustration of 
what we have said, he may find it in the tempta- 
tions of Jesus.* If struggle were sinful, Jesus, 
as a pure Being, could never have known the pull 
of temptation. That He did feel it in proportion 
to the wealth of His nature, the exaltation of His 
mission, and the power of His passion to accom- 
plish that mission, we are ready to believe. The 
point of that temptation seems to be the demon- 
stration of the truth of that testimony, which had 
just been given Him from heaven, that He was the 

*0f Jesus it is said: "The only temptation with real power to Him was a temp- 
tation to good — to inferior forms of good. It was not the temptation to forsake the 
righteousness of God, but to seek it by other paths, less moral and less patient paths, 
than God's highway of the holy cross." — (Forsyth: "Person and Place of Jesus Christ," 
303.) 



MOEAL BIAS IN HUMAN NATUEE 75 

Son of God. "What was implied in that testi- 
mony! That He had creative power. Then, turn 
these stones into bread : for His hnnger furnished 
a real occasion. If He be the Son of God, then 
it is very desirable that some unmistakable sign 
should be given to the people that they might be- 
lieve it. Then, cast Thyself down from a pin- 
nacle of the temple and let the people see that 
angels from heaven bear Thee up and no harm 
comes to Thee. If He be the Son of God, it is 
very necessary that all of earth's forces, evil as 
well as good, shall unite in the formation of His 
Kingdom. Then fall down at the feet of Satan; 
make some compromise with evil ; seek an alliance 
with the powers of a degenerate world, and they 
will all join in bringing the world to Thy feet. 
All the objects presented in these temptations are 
legitimate. All of them Jesus sincerely desired 
to encompass, and His desire was commensurate 
in intensity with the passion of His nature. But 
the means in each case was illegitimate, and the 
moral divergence of means and end furnished to 
Him, and the same divergence may furnish to 
us, an intense conflict, a fierce temptation. 

We then have to do in normal human nature 
with the double impulse — one toward sensuous 
gratification, and one toward spiritual or tem- 
peramental exaggeration. The flesh says : indulg- 
ence without limit; the mind says: indulgence as 
a means toward a higher purpose only. One of 
the elements of the spirit says : let me develop re- 



76 MOKAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

gardless of other virtues or other persons. The 
instructed spirit says: development can only be 
in God. All other growth is but losing the way, 
and consequently losing the goal. 

There is not, then, in normal human nature a 
single bias unopposed, but an impulse met by a 
higher faculty, operating under the guidance of a 
higher law, and for a more ultimate end.* The 
condition of struggle with the flesh will end with 
the earth-life. The conditions of spiritual strug- 
gle are eternal. There are hints, which we may 
be in no situation to analyze or criticise, though 
not irrational in their suggestion, that angels who 
had not the fleshly bias at all, yet fell while in the 
situation of a pure spiritual condition. 

If any one shall say that this discussion is 
academic only; that there is no individual adult 
that is normal, none whose nature is not damaged 
by some sin of his own, we will not join issue 
on the point. Its introduction was necessary to 
show what kind of a thing is the human nature 
which the child inherits. 

To many it seems that the impulse of the flesh 
is too strong for the spiritual nature to resist. 
That if we may not use the word ^ ^ bias, ' ' at least 
that the impulse sinward has the preponderance. 

*Lydston states this truth in a little different way when he says: "It is fair to 
say that the human being is an animal primarily possessing instinctive tendencies to 
crime, but who is subjected under civilized conditions to certain inhibitory influences 
that have accumulated through the ages, and which prevent the average man from be- 
coming vicious or criminal. When these inhibitions or restraints are removed, criminal 
act result." — ("Diseases of Society," 27) He is speaking of crime, and hence speaks of 
external inhibitions; we are analyzing the tendency to sin, and hence bring to view the 
internal inhibitions. 



MORAL BIAS IN HUMAN NATURE 77 

Hence, as a matter of fact, no individnal ever 
passes through his career without giving way to 
sin. Is sin therefore a necessity of our inherit- 
ance? or how shall we explain this universal fact? 

We may say that the Spirit of God is given 
to every man, or offered to all, to assist in with- 
standing the onslaught of impulse. This is ac- 
cepted by all, but it does not clear up the situation. 
Even regenerate persons give the same general 
testimony : that they all at some time fall into sin. 
Is this, then, a disproof of the divine ability to 
keep one from sinning? Does this universal testi- 
mony establish a law of necessity? Has God put 
us under sin at our birth and furnished us with 
no way of escape even through Jesus Christ? To 
say that the universal experience proves sinful 
inheritance, is to allow that the same experience 
proves that there is no relief through faith in 
Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. This is a 
conclusion from which all will draw back. Is it 
not better to seek an explanation of the universal 
experience from the nature of freedom and the 
general influences that pervade all society, even 
the best-known Christian society? 

^^It has been concluded that regenera^tion so 
affects the will, the affections, and the intelligence 
as to establish in its subject a preponderant tend- 
ency toward God and His Kingdom of righteous- 
ness. But a right tendency is not necessarily one 
of perfect and indefectible strength. The complex 
life of the human soul makes it possible that the 



78 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

heavenly attraction should prevail over it, while 
yet it feels the drawings of the things of sense, 
and is in more or less danger of conceding too 
much to that inferior drawing.'' (Sheldon: 
** System of Doctrine,'' 459.) 

It is only necessary to hold that sin is not ne- 
cessitated; that any given exi3erience may be an 
experience in holiness, as well as to allow that in 
the mysterious working of freedom it may be an 
experience in sin. 

This discussion, if followed out, would lead 
us too far off from our subject. We leave it with 
the observation that any explanation that will sat- 
isfy in the case of the regenerated adults will 
also clarify the case of children. Their experi- 
ence in sinning is no whit more universal than is 
that of those who have passed through adult con- 
version. It is a fair question for investigation 
whether, in the cases of carefully trained children, 
their record is not better than that of adult Chris- 
tians. But our position does not demand the af- 
firmation of this, and we leave it an open question. 
Justly Professor Tyler has said: ^^ Appetites are 
old and deep-seated, rude and very strong. Man's 
senses are keen. Old motives, like fear or hate, 
are always threatening revolt against the higher 
and younger moral and religious ruling powers. 
... It has been a long and fearful struggle. 
Bex regis rehellis. The king has always been in 
rebellion against the king. The lower always ap- 
peals from and against the higher. Ape and tiger 



MOEAL BIAS IN HUMAN NATURE 79 

die hard." (''Man in Evolntion," 59.) This he 
says from the evolutionist's point of view. May 
we not hope on that assumption that the higher 
nature may continually strengthen, and the lower, 
being continually awed into obedience, may learn 
to be more tractable ! 

The question is often put in the form. Is human 
nature, unassisted by the Spirit of God, more in- 
clined to evil than to good? In this form the sub- 
ject is obscured rather than illuminated. Man is 
made for fellowship and communion with God 
through the Holy Spirit. "We might as well inves- 
tigate the physical powers of man by raising the 
question, What can he do without an atmosphere ? 
When communion with God is rejected he is ab- 
normal, unnatural, and the answer to the question, 
what he can do in that condition, has no signifi- 
cance. The proper inquiry is concerning man as 
God has planned his nature. We then would ask, 
Is man in his natural condition of fellowship with 
God more inclined to evil than to good? The an- 
swer even then must be : Man is in a moral strug- 
gle with his animal nature, but the issue is not 
uncertain so long as he maintains this living re- 
lation with God. 



CHAPTEE V 

HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 

Too MUCH and too little have been said about he- 
redity : too much if mere physical heredity only is 
meant ; too little if spiritual heredity also is con- 
sidered. It is one of the unsolved problems, and 
agreement concerning it has not been reached. 
Perhaps it has never been properly conceived. 
Some exalt it to a supreme position ; others think 
it may be overcome and nullified by environment. 
Lewes in his ^^Life of Goethe" says: *'It is 
profoundly false to say that * character is formed 
by circumstances,' unless the phrase with unphilo- 
sophic equivocation include the whole complexity 
of circumstances, from creation downward. Char- 
acter is to circumstances what the organism is to 
the outer world : living in it, but not specially de- 
termined by it. . . . Every biologist knows that 
circumstance has a modifying influence; but he 
also knows that modifications are possible only 
within certain limits. . . . Goethe truly says 
that if Eaphael were to paint peasants at an inn, 
he could not help making them look like apostles, 
whereas Teniers would make his apostles look like 
Dutch boors. Instead, therefore, of saying that 

80 



HEEEDITY AND ENVIEONMENT 81 

man is the creature of circumstances, it wonld be 
nearer the mark to say that he is the architect of 
circumstances. It is character which builds a ca- 
reer out of circumstances. ' ' In dealing with such 
a surpassing genius as Goethe we may excuse 
Lewes somewhat for putting the case very strong. 
There is something that precedes circumstance, 
but it can hardly be character. And unless char- 
acter does precede circumstances it can hardly 
be credited with building anything out of them. 
Euskin (^ ^Modern Painters," III, 42) gives even 
more credit to heredity, although, as we shall see, 
in a somewhat mixed conception. ^^The great- 
ness or the smallness of a man is determined for 
him at his birth, as strictly as it is determined for 
a fruit, whether it is to be a currant or an apricot. 
Education, favorable circumstances, resolution, in- 
dustry, may do much, in a certain sense they may 
do everything; that is to say, they determine 
whether the poor apricot shall fall in the form of 
a green bead, blighted by the east wind, and be 
trodden under foot; or whether it shall expand 
into tender pride and sweet brightness of golden 
velvet. ' ' These two sentences are hardly consist- 
ent with each other. The latter allows to circum- 
stances what the former denies to them. A great 
man and a small man belong to the same species. 
Birth has fixed it that neither shall be of some 
other species. This granted, it is within the power 
of circumstance to modify the degree of manhood 
which either shall be. Lacassagne, a French crim- 
6 



82 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

inologist, has said, ^^The social environment is 
the culture medium of criminality." But society 
not only fashions its criminals by its social condi- 
tions; it also produces by social conditions high- 
class citizens. The same law works for preserva- 
tion in one direction, that in the opposite works 
for corruption. Its workings in the preservative 
line we see more clearly, however, in that form of 
society which we call the family, because the 
family has its opportunity at that period when 
character is most impressible and formative.* 
Dr. Lydston gives the following very striking il- 
lustration of the lines of destiny formed by en- 
vironment: ^^Two boys were truants and went to 
a farmer's orchard to steal apples. One of the 
boys was caught: the other escaped. The one 
who was caught was turned over to the constable 
and placed in jail, where he was thrown among 
criminals long enough to fall under the influence 
of evil associations. When released he was much 
worse than when arrested, and got deeper and 
deeper into crime. The other boy, with whom 
he had gone to steal apples, remained in school, 

* The first form of our Indian corn is a grass about two feet high, "bearing at its 
summit a handsome panicle of male flowers, and on the culm below one or two fertile 
spikes three inches long and half an inch in diameter, having the seeds arranged around 
the elongated rachis, . . . This represented all that nature (heredity) could do. 
The vast cornfields of the West, the stalks fifteen feet in height, loaded with three or 
four ears, each nearly a foot in length and two or three inches in diameter, represent what 
nurture (environment) has done," — (Ward; "Applied Sociology," 128.) 

The above is an example of improvement through the power of environment. The 
same author gives an illustration also of the degeneration that may be produced by 
environment. He tells of a grass which he found growing near Washington, D. C, 
pauperized but still very green, and to his astonishment, it was nothing else than de- 
generated wheat. It had arrived at its present condition by having lost the care which 
man gives to it. 



HEEEDITY AND ENVIEONMENT 83 

was looked upon as respectable, acquired an edu- 
cation, became a lawyer, and finally a judge. 
Twenty-five years after the apple-stealing episode 
the boy who ran away and escaped punishment 
was the judge who sentenced to death for murder 
the boy who had been caught and whose punish- 
ment had started him in a career of crime." 
("Diseases of Society,'' 95.) 

A prominent preacher in Chicago said a few 
days ago, ^*We have handed down to us the ambi- 
tions and appetites, talents and taints, virtues and 
vices of our ancestors, just as we get from them 
our forms and features, our manners and voices.'' 
This is probably true, but possibly not by the 
identically same heredity. The heredity of the 
flesh is somewhat differently conditioned from the 
heredity of mind. The form and feature came to 
us in the fleshly birth, and no matter what hap- 
pens to us afterwards, they can not be wholly 
eradicated. But the virtues and vices of our an- 
cestors will have little influence upon us unless we 
remain with them during those years when the 
spirit is coming to its birth. Physical heredity is 
about all that is given to us at birth. That which 
is horn of the flesh is flesh. There is no sort of 
dispute concerning the power of heredity in the 
nervous system. This accounts for all that is cer- 
tainly proven concerning it. The moral traits, the 
acquired traits, parents are not able to hand down 
to their children unless they also have their train- 
ing. But training is usually credited to environ- 



84 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

ment. Many things are credited to heredity incor- 
rectly, unless some broader than ordinary view is 
given to it. It is sometimes said, Some men were 
bom Republicans or Presbyterians, and no earthly 
power can change their tendencies. On the con- 
trary, this must be credited to training, and not 
to birth. If these same persons had been removed 
to the center of Africa at birth, they never would 
have had a notion of Republicanism or Presbyte- 
rianism. 

But we raise the question. Is this intimate 
training environment, or on the level with other 
influences known as environment? Would it not 
be a better conception to think of soul-formation 
as the spiritual birth, and as being the spiritual 
heritage of the child from his parents? This 
would give to heredity all that is claimed for it, 
but would hold it to certain conditions, the ab- 
sence of which would nullify it. When the eyes of 
the child look up into the eyes of the mother, 
which answer back with her own soul illumination ; 
when she presses him close up to her bosom, and 
he feels in the physical heart-beat her spiritual 
pulsations of love for him; when prayer and so- 
licitude ever create about him an atmosphere of 
spiritual dynamic that gives him courage and 
guidance, there is something more vital being com- 
municated to him than can ever come from a dull 
and passive environment, to which he may or may 
not decide to respond. About the first recognition 
that a child has is the recognition of personality. 



HEREDITY AND ENVIEONMENT 85 

'^ As early as the second month it distinguishes its 
mother's or nnrse's touch in the dark. It learns 
the characteristic methods of holding, taking up, 
patting, and adapts itself to these personal varia- 
tions. It is quite a different thing from the child's 
behavior toward things which are not persons." 
(Baldwin: ^'Mental Development in the Child," 
335.) '^When the child takes the next step from 
recognition of personality to the development of 
his own personality, he does so through the func- 
tion of imitation. When the organism is ripe for 
the enlargement of its active range by new ac- 
commodations, then he begins to be dissatisfied 
with . . . contemplation, and starts on his ca- 
reer of imitation. And of course he imitates 
persons." Thus the soul of the child and the 
soul of the parent are in vital communication to 
a degree not existing between him and things. 
It is this ascertained law of vital relation between 
parent and child that demands some intenser name 
than the term environment conveys, and suggests 
the propriety of calling it heredity. No physical 
communication was ever more vital to him, even 
when he formed a part of the physical organism of 
the mother, than the spiritual tides that now flow 
through him from the ardent spiritual nature of 
father or mother. Much attention has been given 
to pre-natal impressions — perhaps not too much, 
if we are thinking of the nervous system alone. 
But the spirit of the mother has its supreme op- 
portunity in the post-natal life, when the child has 



86 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

come to those human conditions where he may re- 
ceive spiritual influences through channels of 
spirit, and not through mere blood arteries. Dr. 
Duvall, of Ohio Wesleyan University, allows the 
statement that the child grows up in the matrix 
of the home-life for the first nine years of his 
life as he grew in the matrix of his mother's body 
for the first nine months. The higher nature is 
spiritual ; its period of gestation is the years when 
parental influences enfold it; streams of habit 
flow into it; bands of power are bound round it, 
directing its growth and controlling the spiritual 
nutriment that is built into its character. Let us 
take a single example of the invincible power of 
the parent, the law of Imitation. Imitation in a 
child is not volitional. He can not help imitating. 
His nature acts that way independently of choice. 
Yet every action performed through imitation 
drops some reflex back into his self -life. His self 
is but the product of his past actions. *^What we 
do is a function of what we think ; what we think 
is a function of what we have done. '' (Baldwin.) 
We thus can control the action of the child, and 
hence the character of the child through the ac- 
tions we live before him, and the authority we 
have over him. Thus these years of childhood up 
to adolescence are much more important for char- 
acter than anything known that can come to him 
in his pre-natal life. If this truth could be ade- 
quately appreciated by parents, they would not, 
as is now frequently done, allow the life of the 



HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 8T 

street to beget the character of their child, to 
whom they have given only a physical strnctiire. 
If this be an allowable conception of spiritual 
heredity, then a child is greatly wronged whose 
parents do not give themselves vitally to him. 
They must allow the arteries of spiritual life to 
pump into his forming being that character which 
he has a right to inherit from them. The child 
that is brought up by nurses instead of by a 
mother is the spiritual offspring of the nurse 
rather than of the mother, and will be more in- 
debted for character to the nurse than to its own 
mother. Nothing saves such a transaction from 
being a tragedy except the not unprecedented fact 
that the character of the nurse is often more noble 
than that of the mother. That mother is mistaken 
who assumes that in giving her child fleshly birth 
she has given him a spiritual being, which now 
she may have cultivated by a hired servant. Noth- 
ing but daily, living contact with herself will im- 
part her own self to him. If separation from the 
parents is complete, the spiritual heritage from 
them will be insignificant. A spiritual heritage 
for our children can not be purchased with money ; 
it must be drawn from us by living processes. A 
child is not indebted to his mother 's milk so much 
for his character as he is to his mother's hope, 
courage, faith. ^^ Children have certain inalien- 
able rights which fatherhood and motherhood 
must recognize. They have a right to stand first 
in the auctions, the interest^ and the endeavor 



88 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

of the parents; they have a right to all that is 
good and noble and encouraging in the parent 
life; they have a right to find their home the 
most pleasant spot on earth; they have a right 
to all the means of refinement that lie within 
the limits of the parents' purse; they have a 
right to proper food and clothing for the body, 
but equally as great right to mental and moral 
nourishment, that neither body nor soul may be 
atrophied; they have the right to have the laws 
of their development, both physiological and psy- 
chological, well understood and held sacred by 
those in authority over them; they have a right 
to have their better nature so strengthened that 
when the seeds of evil speech and evil action fall 
upon their life they will take no abiding root, be- 
cause the soil is already occupied with the fruits 
of better hopes. ' ' (MacDonald : ' ' Child Study, ' ' 
1343.) 

"Nor nurse, nor parent dear can know 
The way these infant feet must go ; 
And yet a nation's help and hope 
Are sealed within that horoscope." 



CHAPTEE VI 

HEREDITARY SIN IS DISPROVED BY RECOVERY 

If there is one thing we know about sin, it is that 
it is a waste of human resources. Its direct effect 
is to poison, tear down, dissipate, disintegrate, den 
stroy the elements, powers, faculties, even the very- 
tissue of human nature. Its power in a single life- 
time to change a human being into a worse than 
beast is marvelous. The body becomes weak and 
refuses its functions, becomes incapable of its 
normal actions. The mind breaks down until it 
is dethroned, and the gross sinner must be directed 
and provided for by organized society. The soul 
loses every semblance to divinity, or even to nor- 
mal humanity. 

Now, if sin were hereditary, one generation 
would commence at the low level at which the last 
generation had arrived. A people whose habits 
were gross, whose practices were lawless, whose 
minds were vicious and impure, whose spiritual 
life was vile and unchaste, under the law of sinful 
development from generation to generation would 
be dragged down so low in fifty generations that 
it would take fifty generations to uplift them to 
the level of those who had lived under a pure gos- 



90 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

pel and obeyed the divine law. Is this true to 
the facts as known in the world? 

Physical degeneracy is a fact that it is im- 
possible to overlook. People who were imper- 
fectly nourished, or whose physical habits brought 
physical weakness and loss, have approached the 
vanishing point, and many have passed it. Luxury 
and other physical vices have been the cause of 
different peoples* passing away from history. 
But this can not be said of moral degeneracy. If a 
people have so lived as to keep up the physical re- 
sources, they show an ability to recover from the 
spiritual degeneracy of a hundred generations in 
one generation. The spiritual life of the Chinese 
must be pronounced as very unclean from the 
point of view of Christianity. So the Japanese. 
And yet out of the heritage of uncounted genera- 
tions we find men coming in a single generation 
to take first rank in our leading American univer- 
sities, and, having accepted the faith of Jesus, to 
rank among the most faithful and exemplary mem- 
bers of His Kingdom in our day. We may take 
even a more extreme example than those named. 
We can go into the heart of Africa and select a 
person for illustration. The life of the people 
of Africa has been astonishingly sinful, beyond 
all possibility of civilized people who have not 
witnessed it to conceive. It has never been re- 
lieved by a great moral or religious teacher. 
From the point of view of Christianity, and from 



HEEEDITAEY SIN IS DISPEOVEN 91 

that of any ethnic religion of history, the life of 
the people of Africa has been a continual stream 
of the most revolting and wasteful sin. The only 
thing that is saved from human wreckage is the 
physical structure, which is found in most perfect 
form and strength. 

And yet Bishop William Taylor brings from 
Africa a little child, whose heritage is this be- 
sotted life of her people for unknown centuries; 
places her in school; friends gather about her; 
by means gained through nursing and other em- 
ployment she pushes her way through college, 
graduates in 1909 from the University of South- 
ern California as the equal of any in her class, and 
takes her master's degree from the same institu- 
tion the following year, and then seeks special 
preparation in a missionary training school to go 
back as a missionary to her own people. What is 
the meaning of this? Does it mean that sin is 
not a very evil thing! Does it mean that there 
is very little ditference between those who have 
known its power and those who have lived above 
it? Or does it not rather prove, beyond a per- 
adventure, that God allows all human beings to 
start on the same level morally! It was this same 
Bishop William Taylor who said, ^^ There are no 
heathen children in the world." God is so just 
and equable in His ways with men that, so far 
as morals are concerned, each child is really in 
spiritual nature at the top. Every fall is a per- 



92 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

sonal fall. Children may become heathen; they 
are not born heathen. If the facts of life do not 
prove this, I am unable to interpret them.* 

This question will be complicated somewhat, 
without doubt, by the question of environment. 
It will not be true that those converts to Chris- 
tianity who remain in their native country, sur- 
rounded by their native people, can in a single 
generation be lifted out of their heritage. They 
will have the ways of thinking and the national 
habits, the prejudices and the moral practices of 
their people. They can not be lifted entirely out 
of environmental consequences until their whole 
race has been lifted out of them. That is another 
problem. The point, however, is: lift them out 
of their environment at birth; give them Chris- 
tian teaching and Christian training, and they 
will take their place immediately among those of 

* Evolutionary writers speak as if the Fall were an epoch in the history of the 
race. E. G. Henderson ("God and Man in the Light of To-day") says: "Man had 
reached a higher stage of development. To him for the first time right and wrong had 
meaning. To him for the first time belonged freedom of choice. To him for the first 
time was presented the upward and the downward course. But having reached the 
new stage in his development, he ought to have taken the upward course, he ought to have 
chosen the good. He actually took the downward course. He chose evil instead of good. 
He turned aside from the path of progress. He fell into sin." (p. 113.) A moment's re- 
flection will show that such a description of a race-act is and can be only a fiction. The 
above language is highly intelligible as the description of the act of an individual; but 
an individual in the evolutionary sense does not thus come "for the first time," etc. It 
is a race that thus emerges from the moral darkness of animal hfe into the moral light 
of a human life. The race could not fall into sin by an act. Only such a fall is pos- 
sible in an individual. Such an account of the fall from an evolutionary point of view 
is reasonable only if we assume that at some time the race was an individual, as Gen- 
esis pictures. But that is a somewhat difficult assumption to fit into an evolutionary proc- 
ess. An attempt to think it through will result, we verily believe, in a rejection of the 
Fall as a race experience, and will leave the sinful condition of the race as the result of 
individual sins. 



HEREDITARY SIN IS DISPROVEN 93 

anotlier race whose ancestors have had the gospel 
for fifty generations. Moreover, while the indi- 
vidual can not be lifted out of his social and men- 
tal habits and practices in a generation, while 
abiding among those who are teaching him by 
example the old ways, yet, marvelous as it may 
seem, Christian Chinamen exhibit individual vir- 
tues of the most sacrificing type as a result of 
the acceptance of Christian doctrine. Chinamen 
died in the Boxer uprising with all the abandon 
to their Savior ever exhibited by the choicest 
spirits of any race. 

In modern times there is no story exceeding 
that of the faithfulness of Susi and Chuma, two 
native Africans, the attendants of Dr. David Liv- 
ingstone, who took charge of his remains after his 
death in the heart of Africa. The care and intelli- 
gence used in embalming his body, the resources 
shown in disguising it for conveyance through 
hostile tribes, the resistance even to the pressure 
of English officials to bury it on the way, the per- 
sistence when sick themselves through nine long 
months against obstacles and difficulties of every 
conceivable description, until at last they gave it 
into the care of relatives and friends in London, 
and all without promise of reward, reads like a 
romance of loyal-heartedness and is almost un- 
equaled in literature. Yet these men, whose virtue 
shines out so suddenly and so brilliantly, had as 
their progenitors for thousands of years native 



94 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

Africans as degraded as sensuality can bring peo- 
ple and as deprived of moral light as Africa 's long 
night is known to have been. 

Thus it is seen that the human stock is not ex- 
hausted by the heredity of sin ; and the only pos- 
sible explanation for it is that there is no heredity 
of sin. Each child is directly God's child. Each 
child is provided with a human outfit morally, no 
matter how his parents may have wasted theirs. 

Perhaps Lyman Abbott goes too far on the 
positive side of inheritance, but certainly not too 
far on the negative, when he says : ^ ' No man ever 
inherited sin. There is not any original sin. Men 
inherit appetites and passions, they inherit temp- 
tations, they inherit weaknesses and frailties and 
infirmities, but they do not inherit sin, and they 
do not inherit virtue. Virtue can not be handed 
down from father to son. . . . "Weaknesses may 
be handed down so that it will be easier for your 
son to fall into sin, but virtue is victory by the in- 
dividual himself, and the victory can not be won 
by another and the defeat can not be suffered by 
another. Men are neither born sinners nor 
saints.'' (^^ Modern Sermons," I, 6.) 

And yet this does not deny the law of heredity, 
in which I most thoroughly believe. But it does 
announce that morals are not transferable from 
one generation to another. This generation 
through heredity is no worse in moral equipment 
because its ancestors were wicked ; that one is no 
better because its ancestors were virtuous. He- 



HEEEDITAEY SIN IS DISPEOVEN 95 

redity is a thing of the flesh, of the nervous sys- 
tem, and hence has immense importance. God has 
given our children to us for fleshly weal or woe. 
We have much to say as to what they shall be; 
but we can not directly consign them to guiltiness 
and spiritual poverty by our sins, through the law 
of heredity.* 

* "The purifying grace of God in human nature does weaken the power of sin, 
and to the degree that it loses its dominion over the flesh, (1) and its enticing influence 
over the spirit, to that extent is its transmissive power weakened." (2) (Cooke: In- 
carnation and Recent Criticism, 151.) 

(1) "Power of sin in the flesh," is here manifestly intended to be understood. 
This would be probably true if there were any sin in the flesh, which there is not. Sin 
is not an attribute of a material substance. There may be disease in the flesh. Whether 
the grace of God weakens the power of disease, we will not discuss, because it is not 
relevant at this point. We can readily believe that it would, but it is simply a question 
of fact to be established. 

That Paul speaks repeatedly of "sin in the flesh" we are aware, but even a slight 
examination will show that he is not thinking of the substance, flesh; but is using the 
word narx as a figure of speech for a nature or person, who is giving himself to the do- 
minion of fleshly impulses. 

(2) This is an easy and at first view apparently pleasant assumption; one that 
has been much indulged in in recent years by different writers. But first, when heredity 
and environment are properly discriminated, the experience of the race furnishes no con- 
firmation of it. It is now rejected by scientists, although the whole subject can hardly 
be said as yet to be worked out definitely. In the second place, if it were true, such 
a law of heredity would produce a condition of hopelessness for mankind. If moral 
qualities are transmissible by heredity, then the bad as well as the good would have 
their cumulative consequences. Unfortunately the history of the race has been so pre- 
ponderantly evil that such a law would long ago have brought us below salvability. 
However such a law would be on its upward side, the downward side must go with it, 
and would have placed mankind in a hopeless condition. There are few things from 
which we have escaped for which we should be more thankful than that the law of her- 
edity does not include in its operation the transmission of moral qualities from gener- 
ation to generation. 



CHAPTER VII 

ACQUIRED TRAITS NOT TRANSMISSIBLE BY HEREDITY 

In seeking for a statement of the doctrine of he- 
reditary sin that would fairly represent the gen- 
eral doctrine that has been held through the cen- 
turies, we have found a considerable variation of 
opinion. But Anselm and Augustin will agree 
in the following summary : God created human na- 
ture without sin. If Adam had not sinned, his 
posterity would have been without sin. But by 
sinning he corrupted human nature (not merely 
himself as an individual, but human nature, of 
which he was the only representative), and his 
posterity now partake of the modified human na- 
ture which he by sinning acquired. His acquired, 
not created or, as we would now say, inborn trait, 
is transmitted to posterity through heredity. 
Both these teachers make a distinction between 
human nature and the individual. They assume 
that Adam was both in himself; that he sinned, 
not as an individual, but as the embodiment of 
human nature. In this they will hardly be justi- 
fied. The accident of being the first individual 
gave Adam no more power to modify human na- 
ture than any other ancestor, unless we assume 
in the start that heredity transmits acquired 



TEAITS NOT TRANSMISSIBLE 9T 

traits. Adam was as much an individual as any- 
other that lives after him. The law of heredity 
will have no different effect in his case than if 
he had not been humanity's only representative. 
"We dare to apply the law of heredity to him as 
exactly and as comprehensively as we would if 
there had been a thousand progenitors instead of 
one. It was no different law because he was the 
first man than if he had been in the second or the 
tenth generation. If the law of heredity does not 
transmit the acquired trait now, it would not do 
so then. This doctrine, then, will be much affected 
by our conclusion concerning this matter of fact. 
It has never been contended that heredity can 
operate to the restoration of humanity to his orig- 
inal righteousness; yet it is difficult to see why 
the law should not operate both ways if it oper- 
ates at all.* 



*The opposite of our contention is widely held, and even taught by some writers 
appealing to public influence. John B. Robins says: 

"We maintain that the best families religiously transmit better qualities to their 
children than irrehgious families; religious communities more than irreligious communi- 
ties; and a religious nation more spiritual worth to its citizens than irreligious nations. 
These are some of the practical results of heredity." — (The Family, 129, cp. 137.) 

That he announces practical sequences in the above statement is too apparent 
to need iteration, but that heredity is the law that accounts for it is a too swift and too 
unscientific conclusion to announce. The cases mentioned cover heredity and envi- 
ronment working together, which produce the results. But scientific observation is 
against the conclusion that heredity alone will account for the transmission of rehgioua 
qualities. 

His Biblical illustrations are not much, if any, better than his scientific foundations. 
He refers to the persistence of race qualities in the Jews. These qualities, however, 
persist only while they remain under the peculiar Jewish environment and training. 
Many Jews have left their race connections, have married with Gentiles, and given 
up their religious culture. Does any one presume it to be possible to trace the blood 
stream of Jewish parentage out into the Gentile peoples? The illustration proves that 
as long as you maintain the Jewish environment, Jewish types persist; but heredity has 
no power to perpetuate them as soon as this environment is abandoned. 

7 



98 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

Saleeby says, in his very recent (1909) work on 
^* Parenthood and Race Culture:" '^ ^Heredity,' 
by Professor J. A. Thomson, is the most recent 
and most valuable (work) for general purposes 
of all books on the subject of heredity. No lay- 
man should express opinions on heredity or eugen- 
ics until he has read it, for it is extremely im- 
probable that they will be valuable." We shall 
agree that this is a subject which must be sub- 
mitted to the testimony of experts. "We need not 
transfer Professor Thomson's extended argu- 
ment. The subject has been surrounded with va- 
rious misunderstandings. These he undertakes to 
clear away. Having done so, he lends his author- 
ity unquestionably to the side that acquired traits 
are not transmissible by heredity. We permit our- 
selves the following extract which he quotes from 
Thomas Fuller, ^'Scripture Observations," No. 
VIII. It puts our question in a vivid form : 

**Lord, I find the genealogy of my Savior 
strangely checkered with four remarkable changes 
in four immediate generations. 

* ^ 1. Roboam begat Abia ; that is, a bad father 
begat a bad son. 

'^2, Abia begat Asa; that is, a bad father, a 
good son. 

* ^ 3. Asa begat Josaphat ; that is, a good father, 
a good son. 

^'4. Josaphat begat Joram; that is, a good fa- 
ther, a bad son. 

* *I see, Lord, from hence that my father's piety 



TEAITS NOT TRANSMISSIBLE 99 

can not be entailed ; that is bad news for me. But 
I see also that actual impiety is not always he- 
reditary; that is good news for my son." 

The idea that acquired qualities are transmit- 
ted to succeeding generations lends itself readily 
to the imagination and passes from one speaker 
to another to adorn many a theory. It has be- 
come very current in connection with popular con- 
ceptions of evolutionary theories to account for 
the mutations of species in successive generations. 
It has been oft repeated as a self-evident truth 
that ^^the giraffe has attained its long neck by 
stretching it for many generations; swimming 
birds have got webbed feet because they stretched 
their toes in the water ; wading birds have got long 
legs because they stretched them; the mole has 
very small eyes because it has ceased to use them ; 
the whalebone whale has no functional teeth be- 
cause it has acquired the habit of swallowing its 
food without mastication." This sounds much 
like evolution, and evolution is a victorious theory ; 
therefore this must be taken for granted. Yet 
it is not believed that the long neck of the giraffe 
is due to the stretching; but rather that the 
stretching is due to the long neck. That is, a new 
species of animals had a start in the leaf -eating 
direction by the modification of an animal bom 
with a neck longer than usual, from some cause 
to us untraceable — a cause certainly not traceable 
to the acquirement of its ancestor. The start was 
not due to environment, but to the selection of ger- 



100 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

minal variation in heredity, which variation, how- 
ever, fits into the environment, or the animal mani- 
festing it would perish and the tendency proceed 
no farther. 

Mutilations, such as dehorning cattle, cutting 
off dogs' tails, binding the feet of Chinese girls, 
circumcision, ear and nose-boring among savages, 
continued many generations, have had no influ- 
ence upon offspring. It is conceded that any 
modification that does not affect the germ cells 
has no tendency to influence children. 

The popular belief that moral qualities are 
hereditary is due to the fact largely that heredity 
and environment are not often separated. These 
two influences combined are usually able to repro- 
duce the moral character of the parents. It is often 
believed that children of drunken parents are pre- 
disposed toward inebriety. This is a case rather 
different from the transmission of moral traits. 
The popular belief is probably not well substan- 
tiated, and other factors than acquired traits are 
involved. ^'Intemperate habits of parents may 
be the expression of an inherited psychopathic 
disposition, and it is this which is transmitted to 
the offspring." Children of drunken parents 
grow up in a drunkard's home; often are fed on 
alcoholic drinks from infancy. Moreover, there 
are facts of heredity that make credible the idea 
that a toxin or anti-toxin in the blood of the father 
may have its effects upon the child. Alcohol has 
an effect upon the whole nervous constitution that 



TEAITS NOT TEANSMISSIBLE 101 

might easily be transmitted. In this ease it is 
not the moral quality of the act of drunkenness 
that is transmitted, but the physical effect of alco- 
hol, producing degeneracy of the nervous system, 
showing itself in some physical weakness in the 
child. But even this is still in the region of con- 
troverted, theory, awaiting confirmation. ^^Most 
of the babies born in the slums are splendid little 
specimens of humanity — so far as physique is con- 
cerned — bearing no marks of the degeneration of 
their parents. In a word, heredity works — the 
racial poisons apart — so that each generation gets 
a fresh start. If there be no process of selection, 
each new generation begins where its predecessor 
began and is as a whole neither worse nor better, 
whether physically or psychically." (Saleeby, 
22.) The famous Jukes family of New York State 
has so often been quoted that it is well wrought 
into the belief of people that bad parents have 
bad children through the power of heredity. In 
this case, however, there was first of all a de- 
generate physical heritage producing its inevi- 
table crop of insane and degenerate criminals. 
Concerning this physical inheritance there is no 
dispute ; but this case in no way substantiates the 
claim that wicked parents have wicked children 
through the power of inborn moral inheritance 
What children of this family escaped a physical 
degeneracy were kept in a corrupt environment, 
which insured the moral reproduction of the par- 
ents. The law of moral heritage can only be 



102 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

shown in those cases where no physical deformity 
is known in the parentage, and where the off- 
spring is removed from the evil environment es- 
tablished by the evil parents. 

The doctrine of the heredity of the spirit from 
our parents mnst assume that the disposition of 
the child will be like that of the parents. If this 
were a true assumption, then all children of the 
same parents would be of like disposition and 
have the same moral qualities. This is not even 
approximately true. Again, an analysis of the 
moral and character qualities of the parents does 
not account for the moral constitution of the 
child. Abraham Lincoln was a conspicuous ex- 
ample of one who can not be accounted for by 
his parents. The biographical mystery of his per- 
sonality, so often mentioned, would no longer hold 
the attention if the assumed law of heredity 
should be put aside as invalid. Who can ac- 
count on the basis of this law for the fact that 
Aaron Burr, the greatest moral degenerate that 
America has ever produced, is the grandson of 
Jonathan Edwards, the greatest spiritual genius 
that America has yet produced^ 

Still there are noticeable resemblances between 
children and parents. Musicians are often the 
children of musicians; many other instances of 
resemblance may be noted. (1) The influence of 
environment may account for most of this. (2) 
We do inherit from our parents a physical life. 
The peculiarities of this physique show them- 



TRAITS NOT TEANSMISSIBLE 103 

selves in our nervous constitution. TMs nervous 
system in contact with a certain environment will 
seek the lines of least resistance, which should 
produce great similarity in developed personality 
between parent and child. The physical predis- 
position of the child is likely to follow the same 
or similar lines that were taken by the predispo- 
sition of the parent. The musician will have very 
delicate, susceptible nerves. His case is some- 
what complicated. Musical temperament implies 
both heredity and culture. The delicate nervous 
constitution — a thing of the flesh — must be inher- 
ited ; it can never be acquired or produced by any 
reaction on the environment. But to be a really 
great musician — especially a vocalist — one must 
also have a great, a cultured soul — a matter of 
the spirit, which comes only by culture and en- 
vironment. Some fine, nervous temperaments, 
able to give the technique of music, need a broad 
literary education, that they may have grea.t 
thoughts to express. Other physical construc- 
tions are favorable to a certain course, as they re- 
act on a certain environment. This seems ade- 
quate to account for all that is proven concerning 
the inheritance of disposition. On the other hand, 
from the same family will come children of the 
most diverse temperaments — an utterly incompre- 
hensible fact from the old theory. It is well es- 
tablished that the moral and religious acquire- 
ments of parents in the direction of righteousness 
can not be transmitted directly. They must be 



104 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

independently acquired by the child. It would be 
strange injustice that God had put us under the 
operation of a law by which we could inherit the 
sins of our parents, but could not inherit their 
virtues.* 

The persistence of a similar environment 
through several generations may produce the 
semblance of heredity without ever establishing 
it in the least degree. ^^Tlie Alpine plants which 
Naegeli transferred to a southern garden were 
changed by their new surroundings; their de- 
scendants were likewise changed, and the new 

*"A11 will admit this kind of inheritance. There is no trouble in regard to char- 
acteristics that are evil. All admit this kind of inheritance. 'Like begets like.' The 
books are full of it. Adam sinned and begat a child in his own sinful likeness. All 
other Adams have done the same thing. Here heredity serves a good purpose. It fur- 
nishes a foundation for all our theologies and theodicies. . . . Has God made it pos- 
sible for us to inherit irreligion, or an evil nature, and not made it possible for us to in- 
herit religion, or a good nature? If so, then why did He make us creatures of inheritance 
at all? Would a wise and good God place in our natures a law that becomes effective 
only when, and as soon as, we become evil? Would it not have been better to have 
left this law out altogether?"— (Robins: "The Family," 142, 143.) 

The possibility that this latter question might have an affirmative reply did not seem 
to have entered the mind of this author. His argument cuts the ground from under- 
neath himself as well as from underneath those whom he combats. Science says that 
neither virtues nor vices, as moral qualities, are heredltable, and hence God is vindi- 
cated as thoroughly as in his conclusion that both are transmissible. But from his point 
of view, that of the heritage of original sin, his argument is very effective. 

This author, and doubtless many others, base their belief upon Exod. 20: 5, 34: 7; 
Num. 14: 18, in which it is said that God visits "the iniquity of the fathers upon the 
children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation." They take this as a state- 
ment of the law of heredity. Such, however, it is not. It is a social law, and in the 
form in which it was practiced in that period of society is indefensible to-day. It will 
be noticed that it is not a law of heredity, which would never run out in its influences, 
but it covers just generations enough to comprehend those who might at the time be 
living with the father-criminal at the time of the commission of his crime. It is not 
hereditary in its character: for it does not specifically apply to those who are to be born 
after the commission of the crime, but to those who may be already living with the sin- 
ner, and presumably participants in his deed, or sympathetic with it afterwards. The 
commentary on this law is the cases where sinners were punished with their wife or 
wives, their children and relatives, and even their cattle. It in no sense is an anticipa- 
tion of the modern law of heredity by which the very physical stock of a man is degen- 
erated by some race poison, and its effects handed down to his posterity forever 



TEAITS NOT TRANSMISSIBLE 105 

characters reappeared with constancy generation 
after generation. But this was acquired or modi- 
iicational, not heredity or innate resemblance, as 
shown by the fact that removal from the garden 
to poor gravelly soil was followed by a reappear- 
ance of the original Alpine characteristics." 
( Thomson : ^ ' Heredity, ' ' 184. ) So a parent whose 
upright character is due to his environment may 
be the father of a son, who in similar moral in- 
fluences is like him. That sequence kept up for 
a few generations, however, would have no effect 
through heredity to keep a son from evil charac- 
ter who was brought up under evil influences dur- 
ing the formative period of his life. We can 
transmit to our children human nature, which is 
in itself neither moral nor immoral. Environ- 
ment makes the child moral or immoral, without 
regard to who was his parent, in so far as any 
influence outside of his own freedom accounts for 
what he is. 

James Harvey Robinson, professor of History 
in Columbia University, says: ^^ Almost all biolo- 
gists now agree that acquired characters are not 
transmitted hereditarily; for we do not come 
about in a way to permit this. The assiduity of 
one generation in acquiring increasing culture or 
its lethargy in neglecting the heritage of the past 
does not affect the minute egg from which the 
next generation springs. Culture does not get 
into the blood; not even language, man's earliest 
characteristic achievement. Had Aristotle him- 



106 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

self been reared among the chimpanzees he might 
ha,ve been a Grnebelkopf, bnt he would not have 
known how to talk.'' C'Snrvey,'' May 6, 1911.) 
The impossibility of handing down any posi- 
tive moral traits is apparent again from the na- 
ture of the content of consciousness. In our na- 
ture there are certain powers capable of receiv- 
ing and dealing with that which comes to us from 
without. This is the gift of heredity. But this 
power innate does not of itself furnish itself with 
any material to work with or to build into char- 
acter. That must all come from the outer world. 
The soul is at first an empty chamber with no 
hidden inhabitants in secret closets which after 
a while present themselves to it. Says Baldwin : 
* ^ There is no question in psychological circles to- 
day of the absolute mental creation which was 
formerly assumed. The newer doctrine of * men- 
tal content, ' on the one hand, which holds that no 
elements of representation can get into conscious- 
ness except as they have been already present in 
some form in presentation; and, on the other 
hand, the doctrine that the activities of conscious- 
ness are always conditioned on the content of 
presentation and representation present at the 
time— these positions make it impossible to hold 
that the agent or mind can make anything for it- 
self *out of whole cloth,' so to speak." ('^Social 
and Ethical Interpretations," 100.) One may 
say, indeed, that these powers forming conscious- 
ness are weak or defective; but that is quite dif- 



TEAITS NOT TEANSMISSIBLE 107 

ferent from saying that they are sinful, which 
involves a voluntary element. 

But after all we persistently believe in the her- 
itage of a disposition that is bom with us, to 
which we attribute the moral course of our life. 
We need not deny the reality of disposition; but 
we need to give more attention to its interpreta- 
tion. What are the elements of the disposition 
with which the child is born? We answer: He is 
social, curious, imitative, active, etc. Among 
these qualities there is none that can be identified 
as sheerly evil. What, then, is an evil disposi- 
tion? How does it arise! There is a certain 
average of qualities which we call human nature, 
the possession of which is thought to constitute 
normality, and is sometimes called '* horse sense," 
because we have no proper term for it. Baldwin, 
seeking a term for it, calls it '^ average social 
judgment.'' Deviation from this is called pe- 
culiarity of disposition. The difference of dispo- 
sition depends upon the preponderance of traits. 
It might remove some presuppositions from our 
mind if we should compare the *^ average social 
judgment" of the various races and peoples. 
What a different thing it is in China from what 
it is in America! How different in civilization 
now from what it was a thousand years ago. This 
might indicate that its standards are quite un- 
der the power of education and environment, 
rather than an invariable innate something. 

How do individuals vary from this human 



108 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

standard of character? By heredity and educa- 
tion. One is born so defective mentally that he 
can never keep step with society, and we call him 
an idiot and place him in an institution to be 
cared for. The aberration of another is not in 
the same direction, yet he is against the standards 
of society; will not comply with them; interferes 
with the rights of others. He is a criminal. Some 
of these we kill ; some we imprison for life ; some 
we undertake to reform. What is the matter with 
themf Why are they as they are? Well, some 
of them are born with this disposition. Is this 
disposition a positive element in their nature, or 
a defect, a minus quantity? Confining our an- 
swer now to those born with the criminal dispo- 
sition, we believe it is a minus, not a plus quan- 
tity. They are not born with a whole human na- 
ture plus something which we call sin ; but with a 
human nature in which something is lacking. 
Miss Maude E. Miner, secretary of the New York 
Probation Association, says in the Second Annual 
Report concerning the girls coming under the cus- 
tody of the society: ^'The large number are not 
guilty of moral obliquity because they are natu- 
rally bad, vicious, and depraved. In my work with 
girls in and out of courts and prisons during the 
last ^ve years I can truthfully say that I have 
seen very few girls who could be so classed. In 
comparison with the total number few have chosen 
the life deliberately. The general truth is that 
they have drifted into a life of vice through weak- 



TEAITS NOT TRANSMISSIBLE 109 



ness of will or throngh domination by a stronger 
will, and liave gone down enslaved by drngs, 
drink, and ^the life' itself. Many of tlie girls 
are weak-willed, and in some instances weak- 
minded, and they have not had the normal resist- 
ing power.'' ('^The Survey," May 27, 1911, pp. 
337, 8.) Let one stand before a company of men 
in a State reformatory institution assembled for 
chapel exercises. If one has not studied the situ- 
ation he will experience a surprise. These men, 
for the most part, are not the bold, reckless, bra- 
vado, daring fellows that he expected to see. 
They are not in possession of all that average 
men have, plus an element that leads them to defy 
society. They are weak men, defectives. Calling 
them men, we see that they are not fully men. 
Being less than men, we call them effeminate, al- 
though we do not apologize to the ladies. They 
have not full, broad jaws, but rather undersized, 
receding chins, showing them defective in will- 
power. Instead of round heads and square fore- 
heads, they are thin between the temples. Their 
eyes are restless and unsteady. They are not all 
so; for there is another class here also. But we 
may rightly conclude that those who have the 
right to the charity of judgment because of her- 
itage are, as we have described, with different va- 
riations showing the same general defects. The 
others that show the lion's strength, whom you 
would not want to meet in the dark, we may rea- 
sonably believe are they who have been trained 



110 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

to crime. Their environment, not their inherit- 
ance, has been their ruin. 

If under the head of disposition we are think- 
ing of the born genius, it is yet a debatable ques- 
tion whether his genius is due to strength or weak- 
ness, a plus to average human nature or a minus. 
While forming an opinion on this question, let one 
study Edgar Allan Poe, our greatest American 
poetic genius, and answer the question for him- 
self. At any rate this matter of disposition does 
not seem to be a direct moral equipment, indicat- 
ing a certain attitude of the will; but rather 
something seated in the physical equipment of 
nerves, or that which sustains the nerves, either 
in the brain or the viscera. These are subject 
to hereditary laws, with all the moral advantage 
or disadvantage that they imply; but the moral 
or spiritual qualities so often accredited to he- 
redity are not directly derivable from ancestors. 
Born dispositions are imbedded in the physical 
qualities ; moral dispositions are personal acquire- 
ments of life. 

Other differences of disposition, not classified 
as degenerate or criminal, are simply the prepon- 
derance of certain traits or their absence in usual 
size, and are rationally traceable to the physical 
equipment or the culture of the physical or moral 
nature. One has a different disposition when 
drunk from that which he has when sober, when 
tired than when rested, when hungry than when 
satisfied. As one may strengthen his arm by ex- 



TEAITS NOT TRANSMISSIBLE 111 

ercise, so he may Ms sense of justice, or purity, 
or honesty. Why he emphasizes this or that in 
his growth is as mysterious as why he chooses 
this or that avocation ; but it is just as little trace- 
able to heredity. No man is born a lawyer; no 
man is bom a hero. 

The transmissibility of Adam's sin or its 
moral effects can not take the form of transmis- 
sion from the individual father to his son ; for of 
such transmission there is not the slightest evi- 
dence. Indeed, it is not thought of in that form. 
The form of its popular belief is that the whole 
human race now occupy a common level of de- 
pravity, and that individual exhibitions of wicked- 
ness are chargeable not to the nature derived 
from one's immediate ancestors, but to one's 
choice. Each individual, unless evidently a degen- 
erate, must bear his own moral responsibility. 
Logically, then, the conclusion which this popular 
belief must draw is that, as a consequence of 
Adam's sin, God gave to the whole race a differ- 
ent and a lower moral constitution than it had 
possessed before. 

As thus conceived there is no possibility of in- 
vestigation: for we have no knowledge of what 
the constitution of the race was before the as- 
sumed fall. But the conclusion can not be upheld 
on the foundation of heredity: for the transmis- 
sion of moral qualities, which of course are ac- 
quired, is not provided for by the working of 
heredity. The belief must rest upon a special act 



112 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

of divine judgment, by which God visited moral 
calamity not only npon Adam, who had sinned, 
bnt npon the individuals who constitute his pos- 
terity, who had not sinned. To say that ^'in 
Adam's fall we sinned all,'' is a moral and meta- 
physical confusion of thought no longer permis- 
sible. The belief, then, has no foundation in any 
known law; it is held in the face of our estimate 
of justice, and attributes to God what the uni- 
versal consciousness of mankind condemns in 
men; we must say it is arbitrarily held, with no 
support save the inertia of a past credulity. 

That God should have lowered the physical 
efficiency of the race is a possible conception, 
based upon the law of heredity, whose justice we 
shall in a moment consider; but even this does 
not imply that into the constitution of this fallen 
race an active principle of sin was injected which 
made inevitable all the acts of sin committed by 
men in all history. To go so far as that is a seri- 
ous charge against Deity : for such a fiat is some- 
thing more than a negative act — something more 
than withdrawing from man some power or effi- 
ciency which he had before. It is the creation 
and implantation of an active principle of evil, 
and in making man a sinner served not the ends 
of divine justice, but the purposes of his Satanic 
Majesty. In so far as it transcended Adam's per- 
sonality in its effects, it was no corrective of evil 
in him, while it worked an indisputable injustice 
to all other men. 



TEAITS NOT TRANSMISSIBLE 113 

The workings of the law of physical heredity 
we can not gainsay. Whether we can construe it 
or not in onr apologetics, it remains an nnques- 
tioned fact. But we surely need not make the 
problem more difficult by any exaggeration of the 
facts. We should carefully study its workings 
and know its extent and limitation before we make 
it a problem or feel the need of its defense. 

1. God has written it in the constitution of 
humanity. It is an implication of the solidarity 
of the race. However much trouble it may seem 
to have caused, its blessings are beyond all meas- 
uring. Indeed, the race as known is an impossi- 
bility without it. 

2. It tends to betterment. By its workings de- 
fectives come to such a point that at last they 
drop out, while anything in the direction of per- 
fection tends to greater stability and greater re- 
productiveness. So that we may say: the law 
weeds out the poorest and preserves and increases 
the best. 

3. While the race is physically a unit, morally 
each individual is a unit, subject to influence from 
others, but not to complete mastery. So the very 
nature of morality is such — having at its heart 
individual freedom — that there is no ground for 
desiring that moral character be subject to hered- 
ity or believing that it is. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE PERIODS OP DEVELOPMENT 

There are certain natural stages in the develop- 
ment of the child, but they vary somewhat in dif- 
ferent children. Their noticeable expression de- 
pends much upon the influences that gather about 
the child at the time. So many items are involved 
in this development that their grouping is more 
or less arbitrary, and hence different authors may 
vary much in their delimitation and classification. 
We will name the following periods and will seek 
only such description as suggests the opportunity 
of moral impression. In this, however, it is easy 
to make mistake by omission. We are coming to 
see more and more that every physical fact may 
have some relation to moral change as it does to 
intellectual. We note also that certain develop- 
ments cross the lines of division and characterize 
two or more periods: 1. First childhood to the 
seventh month; 2. Second childhood to the end 
of the second year ; 3. Third childhood to the end 
of the seventh year ; 4. Later childhood, from the 
seventh to the twelfth year ; 5. Adolescence. Our 
subject does not directly carry us farther than 
later childhood; what we shall say of later periods 

114 



PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 115 

will be guided by the purpose only of showing the 
fruitage of childhood training and guidance. 

Section I. The First Childhood. 

The new-born babe is a very interesting being, 
but very helpless and very insignificant in his at- 
tainments. He can see nothing, can hear nothing, 
and can feel no sorrow. It is probable that in all 
the actions of which he is capable he could get 
along quite as well with a spinal cord and could 
dispense for the time being with his brain. Na- 
ture has done very much and very little for him : 
very little in present realization, very much in giv- 
ing him a capacity for becoming. A fly, a bee, or 
a mosquito is born comparatively complete, ready 
for business at its first salutation. Any one of 
these can take up its life-tasks and make its way 
immediately. It knows everything it ever can 
know; it can do everything now it ever can do. 
The penalty, however, of this full equipment is 
that it can never become ; it can never learn any- 
thing; it can never change into any other condi- 
tion. All the resources of its whole lifetime are 
immediately available ; nothing will ever be added 
to them. Not so the child. He has no complete 
instincts, so that he can do scarcely anything with 
their help; and he has no reason or thought by 
which he may make his way. But his capacity to 
become is boundless. He knows nothing, but can 
learn everything. He is next to nothing; his ca- 



116 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

pacity to he can be measured only in divine units 
of being. The psalmist 's conception is justified by 
the latest conclusions of research: *'Thou hast 
made him a little lower than God/' ^'The baby 
lives in a sort of coelentareate stage of almost 
vegetative life. His whole business seems to be 
to. eat, digest, breathe and sleep, to survive and 
grow. His education consists very largely in 
making his physical surroundings as favorable to 
bodily health as they possibly can be. But the 
baby gives dim promise of something higher and 
better. . . . He kicks and wriggles; he will soon 
run and walk. The young child wishes to be con- 
tinually in motion. He can not sit still long. The 
muscular system is the seat and center of his de- 
velopment. . . . This muscular exercise is lift- 
ing all his vital organs, heart, lungs, digestive 
system, and is giving him the first elements of 
power — a tough body. It is tuning up the nerv- 
ous system and stimulating the brain. . . . He 
is still in the muscular stage, but curiosity and 
wonder and some thought show the dawn of the 
era of mind which quickly follows." (Tyler: 
^^Man in Evolution, '^ 87.) 

The first childhood is the period of the first 
dentition; it is the instinctive period. Virchow 
calls a child at this stage a ^ ^ spinal reflex being. ' ' 
He has a purely reflex activity up to about the 
third month. That means that his actions have 
no volitional element, and consequently no moral 
quality, any more than the motions of a. frog un- 



PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 117 

der an electric stimulus. The baby comes into the 
world with an apparatus ready to act as if angry; 
but such action can have no moral significance. 
Preyer likens the early cries of a child ^^to the 
peeping of a chick breaking its shell, or the bleat- 
ing of a new-born lamb, and observes that they 
have no more intellectual or emotional significance 
than the first cries of these animals. They are 
produced as well by a child without a cerebrum 
as by a child with one. The basal ganglia and 
the appropriate stimulus are all that are nec- 
essary on the neural side for their production.'' 
(Major: ^'First Steps in Mental Growth,'' 282, 3.) 
However, the cries soon come to have the value 
of expressing hunger, pain, cold, discomfort. The 
first step in the development of the sense of sight 
is the perception of light, which is soon after 
birth. This is followed sometimes as early as the 
fourth day by the ability to hear sounds. Light 
reflected from bright-colored objects will be noted. 
The co-ordination of the muscles which direct the 
eyes, the fixation of the eyes upon objects, and 
following the objects with the eyes, are the next 
steps in sight development. This has been ob- 
served, and therefore clear visual perception es- 
tablished, when the child was from one to two 
months old. Among objects which attracted the 
child first and most was the human face; the 
mother 's face and voice may be known within two 
months. When two senses work together they 
hold the attention more closely than one working 



118 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

alone. We emphasize the importance of this early- 
recognition of the mother because, as we have ar- 
gued in another place, the spirit of the child is 
to be formed by the spirit of the mother chiefly, 
and before any other object begins its work the 
mother has gripped the spirit of the child and 
has begun her work. Very early he differentiates 
the character of sounds, whether agreeable or 
otherwise, and is soothed by gentle sounds and 
distressed by harsh sounds. The ear is the sense 
organ through which the nervous system is most 
powerfully and profoundly acted upon. Loud or 
sudden noises produce instinctive fear in the 
early days. True or genuine fear, however, is not 
possible to a child under three or four months; 
for that implies a definite idea of evil or danger. 
A child that has suffered much is more likely to 
show these apparent fears than one that is 
stronger and healthier. This fear is excited by 
sudden changes, and fear of strangers is some- 
times awakened when he is four to twelve months 
old. Thus again nature is shutting out the 
strange world and locking him up with his mother 
and the family life where he is cherished and 
whose right it is to fashion his soul. 

The following general remarks have their ap- 
plication as well to later periods ; but they are in- 
troduced here because they are not inapplicable 
to this earliest period. Perhaps the most impor- 
tant thing to be noted in the very early period of 
life is that ** habits of feeling'' and fundamental 



PEEIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 119 

tastes may be formed and modified. Feelings lie 
quite close to the instincts. For this reason it has 
been thought that they conld not be changed. Bnt 
even the instincts of animals can be modified. A 
chicken, if not given the opportunity to follow 
within the first few days, will never develop it; 
or, if opportunity is given, will learn to follow 
human beings. When quite young an animal may 
be made vicious by teasing, which by kindness 
could be made docile and kind. A colt may be so 
fooled with as to be almost useless afterwards as 
a horse. So the habitual mood of a child may 
be turned this way or that to a very essential de- 
gree. A child may be teased into habitual sus- 
picion. He may be nagged into habitual defen- 
siveness. A great battle in after life may be 
brought about by the carelessness with which he 
is handled. Many people handle babies as if they 
were playthings, entirely for their own amuse- 
ment, regardless of the present or permanent im- 
pression on their nature. They do not forecast the 
permanent twist made in the disposition by their 
thoughtless actions and words. Yet there is no 
future time when the impressions made are so 
deep and, therefore, so permanent. Thoughtless 
hands should never touch a child. 

Character's formation is largely the question 
of the acquirement of certain tastes. When these 
lie deep down in the nature they will load the 
balances of the great decisions made in life be- 
tween the right road and the wrong. Does a child 



120 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

love the beautiful, the true, the chaste; does he 
love to study, to investigate, to discover facts and 
truths! Each one of these tastes is like a hook 
on which may be securely fastened certain moral 
appeals in the after life. Appeals have influence 
not because of their own weight and justness, but 
rather because of the reaction that the nature 
makes to which the appeal is made. So in the 
first or second childhood we are arranging the 
conditions on which future conquests may be se- 
cured. This chance lost, and after-efforts will 
have little eifect. Habits, which are originally 
merely habits imposed by the parent, come later 
to be rationalized, adopted, and made the basis 
of feeling and intellectual attitudes. 

Sectioi^ II. Secoe^d Childhood. 

Many conceive of the nature of a child as an 
infolded being like a rosebud. The petals, the sta- 
mens, and every element are already there in the 
form in which they will afterwards be manifested. 
One may take the rose and analyze it and find 
all of these parts as they will afterwards appear 
in the complete rose. It may change its color and 
acquire toughness of texture as it opens, but noth- 
ing new will be added to it as it unfolds. Such 
is a rather popular conception of the child. Many 
do not conceive of the possibility of adding any- 
thing to his nature or putting anything into his 
character. They think of the child as having a 



PEEIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 121 

certain spiritual form, given to Mm throngh in- 
heritance, and there is nothing to do but to give 
him a chance to unfold. At about fourteen years 
of age he will have acquired the power to give 
the real and final expression to his nature, which 
he will do notwithstanding any influences that 
may have been brought to bear to change him. 
Indeed, they think that any interference with his 
spontaneous development would be likely to mar 
him, just as any manipulation of a rosebud would 
permanently mar its potential beauty. Parents 
accepting this theory of the child-nature object to 
teaching him practices or instilling in him habits 
that anticipate his ultimate choices. They would 
not approve of infant baptism, or the learning 
the forms of prayer, or church-going habits, or 
anything in general of a religious nature that is 
not his personal choice. 

This assumption is certainly of the greatest 
and most fundamental importance. If true, there 
is little significance in the parental function. To 
have given the child physical birth and to provide 
physical sustenance and educational opportuni- 
ties is about all that a parent can do. The people 
who adopt this view do not apply it in its edu- 
cational form. They do not wait to see what is 
in a child's mind before sending him to school. 
On questions of mathematics, logic, or history 
they would not submit the decision to him. It is 
apparent, even to those believing this general 
view of the child, that the mental life is rather 



122 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

empty until it is filled. But by some rather ex- 
ceptional mode of reasoning they are ready to act 
on this theory concerning his moral and religious 
nature. 

The view is just as untrue morally as it is 
mentally. No doubt at birth there are certain ele- 
ments given that can with difficulty and only par- 
tially be changed. These are all implications of 
the nervous constitution; it will be very hard to 
modify that or defy its workings. If we know 
the nerve weaknesses we may protect him at that 
point and secure to him a different and a longer 
career than would be afforded by the average en- 
vironment. The nerve qualities will aid or defeat 
the avocation in life. They may make possible 
or impossible the career of a musician, and modify 
to a degree the possible success in various other 
pursuits. But it is quite an extreme to say the 
child is a born musician, or poet, or mathemati- 
cian. It is better to think of him as an empty 
vessel of a certain size and texture. He is made 
so that he can hold certain things and a certain 
amount; but the vessel has nothing in it yet. It 
will never have in it anything that is not put in it. 
It will be very hard to put into it something tha,t 
it was not made to hold, or to make it hold more 
than nature constructed it for. Yet no one in 
advance can profitably estimate the character- 
capacity of a child. I think the prognosticators 
would have missed it on Abraham Lincoln by very 
large measurements. We can not make a brute 



PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 123 

of the child — unless he is bom an idiot; we can 
not make him an angel. But somewhere between 
these limits he will be what we put into him 
mentally and morally. His boundaries are set 
by human nature; but inside this limitation we 
may put in the moral qualities that we choose, 
provided we will work according to the law of 
his being. The strength of the animal impulse 
will give the conditions of the moral contest which 
will ensue; but for the spiritual side of that con- 
flict we may equip him. If this be the true view 
of human nature, then the parental function is as 
essential morally as it is physically. Physically 
the parents give to him being; morally they may 
also give him well-being. He will perish physic- 
ally if they do not supply him material food; he 
will just as surely perish spiritually if they do not 
supply him with spirit-food. As both parents are 
essential to his physical existence, so both parents 
have an essential part in his spiritual building. 
The function of the mother in rearing the child 
is generally conceded; but the elements that a 
father contributes are not so usually observed. A 
boy is wonderfully handicapped who loses either 
early in life. The kindlier qualities, the elements 
noted in good manners are apt to be unacquired 
unless a mother-love shall instill them. On the 
pther hand, the deeper elements of honor and 
moral endurance are not acquired so easily with- 
out the father. A shell of respectability will be 
built up in a boy who grows up with women ; but 



124 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

lie will be iinreliable in the rugged struggles 
known to public life — I speak of tendency, know- 
ing well bow successfully certain fathers and 
mothers have overcome their difficulties when 
compelled to work out the problem alone. 

This view of the child increases immensely the 
parental responsibility and accentuates the impor- 
tance of influences received as early as the period 
we are now studying. He is now receiving ele- 
ments of life, real character-stuff, through eye 
and ear, and nothing capable of making an impres- 
sion upon him is unimportant. The child in this 
period learns to walk and to talk ; mastication be- 
gins, which is the first break in his close physical 
connection with the mother-life. These powers 
indicate the broadening of the sources of influence 
that reach him. Hitherto he could receive only 
those influences which came to him; now he can 
go after impressions, and when they are not ap- 
parent, can ask for them. While at this time the 
majority of the higher animals — also automatic 
idiots — ^have their mental development arrested, 
the child parts company forever with them; for 
he is now beginning in real earnest that mental 
growth which distinguishes him from them. The 
social life is now established and will grow more 
and more. Fear and anger, the animal emotions, 
are very early exhibited. If the fear is allayed 
or dispelled, its exhibition becomes rare; if the 
anger is never allowed to avail anything, it be- 



PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 125 

comes very infrequent. Affection and sympathy, 
the higher emotions, come later ; and compassion, 
one of the highest emotions, does not appear until 
near the close of the period. Different authors 
have noted the evident sorrow of the child when 
the picture of a man was cut into by a pair of 
scissors. These higher emotions, being encour- 
aged, grow rapidly and become habitual. 

Among intellectual qualities, attention, mem- 
ory, volition, and somatic consciousness, powers 
shared by the lower animals, are first developed, 
while active imagination and reason, the essen- 
tially human powers, are the last to be developed. 
Some idea of number is now shown. Imitation, 
the power which is of so great importance through 
all the years of parental guidance, now appears. 
It is the spiritual hand which the child out- 
stretches and with which he takes to himself all 
within sight and hearing. It is deeply imbedded 
in the nature; arises as an impulse previous to 
reason and volition, so that he can have no choice ; 
he must imitate. Before reason or volition can 
play any great role this activity has the child's 
development in its grip and reigns supreme. Its 
causal law is, ^^The idea of a movement is al- 
ready the beginning of that movement.'' The 
idea is not completely known until it has been 
experienced. In other places we have called at- 
tention to the advantage that it gives the parent. 
We need not dwell further upon it here. The 



126 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

period of the creative imagination begins now 
and extends on to the tenth year. Its importance 
will appear in the next period. 

Section III. The Third Childhood. 

The Third Childhood extends from the end 
of the second to the seventh year. In the work 
of parental direction of character-formation this 
is undoubtedly the most important period of all. 
It has been preceded by a physical foundation- 
laying; it will be followed by other periods im- 
portant in child self -direction ; but this is the 
golden opportunity for the work of parent or 
guardian spirit. Imitation and authority have 
their fullest operation now, the two arms which 
may encompass the child-life with a fair degree 
of absoluteness. The important physical changes 
are the second dentition and the arrival of the 
brain to its full size. He is now slowly growing- 
out of the absolute domination of the emotional 
element. In the ideal imitative period, from the 
fourth to the tenth year, he is building with the 
best material that is within his observation, and 
with the power of a creative imagination which 
runs through the same time he is dissecting this 
observed material and building up its elements 
into a life-castle of his own. He will not rebel at 
authority if consistently and unvaryingly ap- 
plied. He is now forming habits that lie at the 
deepest foundation of his life, which like guard- 



PEEIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 127 

rails will fence the whole subsequent career. 
Blessed is the child whose parent now recognizes 
and conscientiously uses his opportunity, which is 
very ample, but once passed, can never be recalled. 
Imitation precedes the acquisition of language 
and is a powerful aid in its acquirement. Indeed, 
language is acquired through the imitation of 
sounds. While imitation is an activity which the 
lower animals exercise, and is sometimes ac- 
counted a power of low grade for that reason, yet 
in the forms above mimicry only self-acting be- 
ings or souls imitate. Not only is language its 
product, but habit is also: for habit is nothing 
more than self-imitation. Underneath it lies a 
power which gives it all the greater effect in char- 
acter-formation, the power of admiration or love. 
*^The individual sees ideals before him and im- 
personates them; loves them, and imitates them. 
Gradually he acquires as a second nature his 
ideals, and must keep growing on into new and 
higher ideals.'^ Thus imitation is based on love, 
and it is emphatically true of the actively appro- 
priating nature of a child that what he loves he 
becomes — as true as that other law : what he does 
he becomes. Imitation plays an important role 
from another point of view : it is a sort of eman- 
cipation from a self without content to a self 
which he admires. Here, as everywhere, nature 
abhors a vacuum. Imitation is powerful again, 
because it begins so early, about the fifteenth 
week, and holds its compelling place on until rea- 



128 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

soning has crowded it from its regnant rule in 
the adolescent years. 

As we analyze this imitative activity we dis- 
cover there is a slight tendency to imitate things, 
as an engine; but much more to imitate persons. 
Another important element of this tendency is 
that the child imitates the adult much more than 
other children or animals, and the imitation of 
adults increases with the years up till eleven years 
of age. Thus the Almighty has given the parent 
an advantage over any competitors in influence 
during these years. Neither things nor animals 
nor undeveloped children can take away the child 
from the molding influence of the parent. There 
are tied up in this law unmeasured possibilities 
for the good of the future generation. 

The Creative Imagination: the Romancing 
Period. — ^We adults are learning that we do not 
live under the intellectual dominion purely of the 
world of objective fact. The mind is constructive. 
Its ultimate construction is limited by the mate- 
rial that comes to it from without; but the form 
in which it builds and the arrangement of the men- 
tal product is by no means identical with the ob- 
jective material. We are idealists, to whom the 
objective world furnishes the bricks and mortar 
that we are using in building our castles, which 
are the true home of the soul. 

It is not wonderful, then, that it is quite easy 
for the child to be estranged from the literal facts 
of sensation and perception. By himself he will 



PEEIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 129 

construct a world for himself, and others can 
greatly aid him. The elements of this imagina- 
tive world are supplied by ears and eyes. The 
mind never imagines anything the elements of 
which it has not experienced. But the use he 
makes of these elements is not the same that a 
mirror makes of the objects supplied it. With an 
old hat on his head, a glove on one hand, and a 
basket loaded with a few toys, he will make a 
journey to the farthest limits of his habitable orb 
without ever going out the door. What an op- 
portunity does this activity afford the guardian 
spirit of his life to direct in his world-building by 
supplying ideal and beautiful material out of 
which a soul-enlarging world may be constructed ! 
What an opportunity it affords to careless or mis- 
chievous minds to furnish material for a world 
of terror and vice ! Charles Lamb recalls the time 
*^when through the ignorant officiousness of his 
old nurse, whose disciplinary methods were worse 
than the faults she sought to correct, as well as 
the terror-starting illustrations of his father's 
Stackhouse Bible, night time, solitude, and the 
dark were his hell; for from his fourth to his 
eighth year he never laid his head upon his pillow 
without an assurance, which realized its own 
prophecy, of seeing some frightful specter." 
Goblins and ghosts are more accessible instru- 
ments of torture, and by no means less effective, 
than the rod with irresponsible, conscienceless, 
and thoughtless parents and others. The applica- 
9 



130 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

tion of the rod might have been beneficial, even 
if cruel and needless, its hurt would have been 
temporary ; but the goblins and ghosts will never 
let up their stings and starts while life shall last. 
Burns catalogues his infant tormentors as ^'dev- 
ils, ghosts, fairies, brownies, warlocks, spunkies, 
kelpies, elf-candles, dead-lights, wraiths, appari- 
tions, cantraips, giants, enchanted towers, drag- 
ons, and other trumper^^" One wonders what 
else could be outside of this list. He said: *^It 
had so strange an effect upon my imagination 
that to this hour, in my nocturnal rambles, I some- 
times keep a sharp lookout on suspicious places; 
and though nobody can be more skeptical than I 
am in such matters, yet it often takes an effort 
of philosophy to shake off these idle terrors. ' ' 

"Wordsworth evidently had a similar experi- 
ence; for he speaks of 

" Huge and mighty forms, that do not live 
Like living men, moved slowly through the mind 
By day, and were a trouble to my dreams/' 

Barring accidents, children will not be more 
afraid of the dark than. the daylight. It is prob- 
able that because people have pictured the dark- 
ness as inhabited by the strange and mysterious 
powers, against which the child can not protect 
itself when suggested, that they often show ex- 
ception to this statement. In so far as accidental 
suggestions are likely to occur should we be on 
our guard against imparting fears of this kind. 
The ' * spooks ' ' and the apparitions should be exor- 



PEEIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 181 

cised from cliildhood land by a generation of care- 
ful and truthful teaching — a teaching which must 
not leave the darkness uninhabited to be peopled 
by any mischance with the ^^ bogey" spirits; but 
which will instill the quiet confidence that *^God 
dwelleth in the darkness as in the light/' and His 
child may abide without fear or danger. 

The romancing tendency of the child should 
be carefully discriminated in its moral character. 
It does not have the moral character of lying, al- 
though at times it may have that appearance. 
The child makes an imaginary world out of words 
as well as out of actions. It is not exceptional 
that this imaginative falsification may come forth 
in answer to questions, and the child seem in an 
effort to deceive. It may be paradoxical that 
there is such a normal activity as this in the child 
whose nature receives a dreadful shock at dis- 
honesty in others. The key to the solution is that 
the two elements run side by side and are not to 
him consciously opposed to each other. The 
make-believe world is not a violation to truth in 
his own feeling. If parents will carefully make 
the distinction, it need not be so regarded by us, 
even when that made-up world has such a vivid 
possession of the mind that it is difficult to dis- 
entangle the fact. Our romance to children need 
not violate their nature; but a distinct misstate- 
ment of fact to them will destroy our influence 
over them. Sir Oliver Lodge holds that children 
^'should be told the exact truth when they ask 



132 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

a serious question." A little boy put tMs con- 
tradiction of truth and romance in form one day, 
when he said, *^What my mother says is so, even 
when it ain't so." I leave to others the solution 
of the Santa Clans problem, with this incident: 
A little fellow said at the recent Christmas, *'I 
have found out about this Santa Claus business, 
and now I am going to find out about this Jesus 
business." Sydney Smith said that ^^he would 
a thousand times prefer that his child should 
die in the bloom of youth rather than it should 
live and learn to disbelieve." 

Mrs. Lamoreaux calls attention to one of the 
dangers of misunderstanding this activity of the 
mind. She says : * ^ This world of make-believe is 
as real to him as the world which is seen through 
his eyes, and often he can not distinguish between 
the two. Many a little heart has quivered over 
the punishment inflicted for * lying,' when willful 
misrepresentation was not in his thoughts. How- 
ever, harsh treatment of a vivid imagination may 
result in real deception later on; for the child 
can not help ^seeing things' too wonderful to be 
enjoyed alone, and then, perforce, there must be 
deliberate planning to escape the punishment. 

**This harshness also begins to raise an in- 
visible barrier between the child and the parent. 
It was felt by a little maiden of rare fancy, who 
said in a whisper at the conclusion of one of these 
marvelous tales, 'But don't tell mamma.' The 
impassable wall between many a mother and 



PEEIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 133 

danghter in later years, once consisted of but a 
scattered stone here and there." ('^The Unfold- 
ing Life," 66, 67.) This activity should be culti- 
vated by an active sympathy. It is one of the 
rich powers of the being. The constructive imag- 
inative power will be needed in any vocation of 
life. To see things that are not yet is the essen- 
tial element of the statesman, the merchant, the 
doctor, the preacher, the reformer, as well as the 
poet and the painter. That person is a more 
helpful parent or teacher who can become a child 
again and enter again into the world of make- 
believe with the child. The literature of stories 
and heroes that assist this faculty is not only com- 
mendable, but essential to normal development 
at this time. Blessed the child who has a grand- 
mother or grandfather who has passed out of the 
hard facts *^that are seen" and has come again 
to the land of vision and will tell him the won- 
derful excursions made by fancy in that delight- 
ful world where all things are as we please to 
have them. 

Sectiois' IV. Later Childhood. 

In a very real sense each period prepares for 
the succeeding one. The problems connected with 
any period are partly solved by the good or bad 
foundation laid in the preceding one. The diffi- 
culties of Later Childhood, which extends from 
the seventh to the twelfth year, in any case 



134 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

great, are more easily mastered if wisdom has 
already guided the hand of the parent up to this 
point. "We are always reaping what we have al- 
ready sown. So emphatic is this truth that if a 
child's character-direction is now to be under- 
taken for the first time, it would be a bold prophet 
that would announce the probability of success. 
We will assume that there is simply to be the 
continuance of good work already begun. In this 
case there will be no sharp corner to be turned. 
The changes to be noted will not transpire some 
bright morning, making that day's task greatly 
different from what it was the day before. Never- 
theless the changes are real, and one must be 
prepared for them and be able to discern at last 
when they have arrived, even though they have 
approached by imperceptible increments. 

Former lines of activity still continue; some 
to be intensified; some to diminish gradually; 
others are introduced that are more or less new. 
Physically this is a period of slow growth, but 
the health is good and the vigor strong, except- 
ing that at the age' of eight or nine the child is 
easily fatigued. There is great increase in man- 
ual dexterity, and corresponding to it the sense 
of utility has grown. *^What can you do with 
it?'' ^^What 's it good for!" are frequent ques- 
tions. There is an increase in objectivity of atti- 
tude as distinguished from the imaginativeness 
of the earlier period. Fact has more charm than 
fiction now. The child insists on reality. He will 



PEEIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 135 

like a story better if in answer to his question 
we can insist that it is true. *^The wise teacher 
will discard imaginative illustrations and use 
those drawn from history, biography, science, and 
his own experience.'' Doing rather than dream- 
ing is his ideal. 

Now, if not before, he spends much time out 
of doors. This tends to independence and spon- 
taneity of movement as compared with the former 
imitativeness. This is attributable partly to the 
accidents of parental direction rather than to the 
disappearance of the tendency to imitate. There 
is plenty of action still, but it is not now the 
mere release of nervous energy ; it is guided more 
by purpose and aim. The brain now attains its 
full human size, which may well suggest the en- 
trance upon a new stage of life. Yet it is a pe- 
riod comparatively uninteresting to investigators 
and perhaps to people generally. Less is written 
about it than concerning Early Childhood on the 
one hand, and Adolescence on the other. •>The 
naivete and * innocence" of childhood have 
passed; the earnestness of Adolescence has not 
arrived. The child from seven to twelve must for 
a time be content to be rather uninteresting and 
sit in the shadows little observed. This is prob- 
ably less trying than at some other periods ; for 
he does not readily express himself publicly. He 
is observing rather than being observed ; often he 
prefers to do this from some seclusion where his 
presence is not noticed. An effort to make him 



136 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

express himself before others rrnist likely be based 
on an appeal to his vanity and may be an injury 
rather than a benefit. He is now allowing im- 
pressions to sink down deep into his nature ; after 
a while they will come to expression. Selfishness 
now asserts itself very strongly. Acquisitiveness 
is very active. These qualities make the use of 
rewards and punishments very effective, and for 
that very reason they may be misused unduly to 
accentuate these natural tendencies. It will take 
great tact to direct them toward good develop- 
ments. Honor rolls, badges, buttons, grades, and 
rank are very influential. The feeling of justice 
is very strong ; playing fair is a standard of great 
potency. Curiosity, heretofore a strong passion, 
is now regnant. It is now the time when a boy 
will shut himself up for half a day and take a 
clock to pieces to see how it is made. This passion 
for knowledge should be regarded as God 's thirst 
implanted in the soul to be satisfied to the fullest 
possible extent. It would be abortive to crush it ; 
it is soul-growth to strengthen it. However, it 
may lead in any moral or immoral direction ; the 
work of the good guide is to direct it in the in- 
terests of the higher and eternal life. Authority 
is now naturally acknowledged. Previously he 
may have followed inclination without any recog- 
nition of its contradiction to the will of another; 
now he recognizes the two wills and, if rightly 
directed, learns to submit his own without wrench 
or strain to his nature. The sense of right and 



PERIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 137 

wrong is stronger than it was formerly, but yet 
does not often prove a determinative power of 
decision. He still leans on the moral conscious- 
ness of others. This fact aids rather than hinders 
in rendering obedience to others. 

The social instinct is now greatly strength- 
ened. Its direction raises one of the most difficult 
problems yet encountered. He is still appreci- 
ative of companionship in general; but compan- 
ionship of the same sex and age becomes impera- 
tive. The '^gang" spirit now arises with all its 
indifference to every other question except com- 
panionship. This is a law of nature unrepealable ; 
how shall it be dealt with? We assume that every 
natural law may be used in the higher develop- 
ment of the child. Some parents respond to this 
demand with no thought of directing it to the 
higher nature, and let the impulse have its wild 
way. The boy at least is turned loose to find his 
own ' ' gang, ' ' and the problem of character is sur- 
rendered. The unresisting response to this wild 
demand is no more rational than it would have 
been to give way before the wild striving of any 
other natural impulse. The impulse means com- 
panionship. The problem is to provide such as 
will be helpful and not ruinous. Parents them- 
selves may unbend and become children with their 
children, supplying at once the yearning of the 
child and gaining a stronger hold upon them. It 
is also the opportunity of re-enforcing the re- 
sources of the home from the best of the outside 



138 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

world. Such companions as would help in the 
character problem may be invited into the home. 
The companionship of life through literature is 
suggested by the need. Inquiry will open up a 
field of influence from this source that is almost 
compelling. As a matter of fact there is no child 
so difficult as the one that is seclusive, individual, 
unsocial. One can not steer a ship that is stand- 
ing still. One can not guide a life that moves not. 
This social impulse is the great danger and the 
great opportunity. It is the period of hero-wor- 
ship. This element may enable one to hold in 
check and direct other activities not so directly 
noble or easily controlled. 

This is the period when the child starts to 
school. This event renders the problem very com- 
plex. Of our public school system we are justly 
proud as being, all things considered, the highest 
mark of our civilization. Our public school teach- 
ers rank far above the average of our people in 
intelligence and morals. To mention school life 
as intensifying the difficulties of child-culture 
above any one factor yet encountered, is not to 
speak slightingly of these. But the school neu- 
tralizes the distinctive features of the home to a 
considerable degree. It is a leveler. Into it go 
the influences of all the homes of the community, 
and some of them are careless and indifferent to 
a degree that renders the children from them a 
moral infection. These homes have none of the 
ideals for which we are pleading; crime and filth 



PEEIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 139 

and moral shame have no opposition, bnt are 
yielded to nnder the slightest occasion. The chil- 
dren from such homes array their authority and 
influence against all the rules and standards of 
the homes that seek in the wisest way to develop 
virtue and high character. Your little seven-year- 
old is to be submitted to this moral blast when 
you are not there to protect or to neutralize. 
Surely that presents conditions of an uncertain 
issue if not of an unfair struggle. It would lead 
us wide afield to discuss it, but the only means 
of combating that influence, apart from aiding the 
school teacher, is to join with others in the effort 
to uplift that degraded home. Its existence is a 
menace to your child as well as to the destiny 
of the child that comes from it. Under certain 
circumstances it might be duty to refuse to send 
your own child to the school if the danger were 
imminent and too great for a child to meet with- 
out almost certain destruction. The State has 
no more right to harbor a moral infection in the 
school than it has a physical one. 

During this period, if ever, the church-going 
habit must be established. Differences of view 
might be encountered, and some reasonable, if not 
compelling, objections given for its neglect 
hitherto. But all subterfuges should now be swept 
aside. Those who believe that the Church has a 
mission, which can be accomplished only for those 
who attend its services, must now endeavor to es- 
tablish a love for and a habit of Church attend- 



140 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

ance. Neglect up to this hour may have been a 
mistake ; further neglect is fatal. The child that 
neglects church attendance up till twelve years 
of age, barring spiritual accidents, will join that 
large crowd from our Christian homes who never 
become Christians. The feeling of need of the 
Church is a childhood growth ; if then suppressed, 
there is no natural period for its development. 

There is no development of this period more 
burdened with destiny than that of the memory. 
Memory was an early activity, but it was not re- 
tentive. It was sufficient for the personality- 
formation of that passing time; but it did not 
bridge the years of childhood and maturity. The 
bonds of association in an infantas memory are 
like ropes of sand ; unless continually rebuilt, they 
fall away. But our present period is the ^ ' Golden 
Memory Period.'' ''The physical side of mem- 
ory is most interesting. On the covering of the 
brain, each in its own place, the images or im- 
pression brought in by the senses and the activ- 
ity are registered. So sensitive and so suscep- 
tible are the brain cells during childhood that 
these impressions are received as clay receives 
the touch of the sculptor 's finger, and under right 
conditions they are ineffaceable. When the soul 
acts upon these images they live again, and we 
say, *We remember.' " (Mrs. Lamoreaux: *'The 
Unfolding Life," 69.) 

So to speak, the brain cells are not preoccupied 
now, and they may receive impressions which 



PEEIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 141 

shall have right of way for all future life. It is 
the ideal time to store the mind with all kinds of 
mental wealth in literature — poetry, the Bible, 
hymns containing the best truths of life and spirit. 
And then, how important to store the memory 
from the life itself with impressions that will be 
mental wealth when recalled. Memory has to do 
with that strange something or nothing which we 
call time. It is a very elusive thing. We some- 
times call it a stream ; and yet future time is non- 
existent; past time is non-existent; present time 
as soon as it exists becomes past time, and hence 
vanishes. Yet with this vanishing nothingness 
we build the most precious things of consciousness 
or destiny. The bridge that spans the present 
and the future from this end is called Life ; from 
that end is called Memory. As life, it is short; 
as memory, it is long. Its pleasure as memory 
can only be determined by its character as life. 
Now we can arrange it for our child to be either 
pleasure or pain; then, it must be what it has 
been. The pleasures of memory depend not upon 
itself, but upon the nature of past deeds. It is 
impartial ; it brings back all of the past, whether 
of joy or misery. The wealth of all after-years, 
through the channel of memory, is potentially in 
the hands of parents now. Cares will come after 
a while; sorrows will sink their pangs deep into 
the nature. What an opportunity now to sow 
deep the sunshine of life, that, come what will, 
can not be entirely effaced! 



142 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

Section V. In the Yeaks That Follow. 

"We have now followed the child as far as onr 
purpose requires. There yet remains the period 
of Adolescence; but it belongs rather to youth 
than to childhood. It has received much attention 
from investigators, and literature upon it is abun- 
dant. It presents opportunities for revolution of 
character, while we have traced only normal evo- 
lution. 

If the proper attention has thus far been given 
to the child, he is now well prepared for entrance 
upon this peculiar ^* storm and stress *' period. 
He will have unusual crises — physical, mental, 
and spiritual — through which he must pass, which 
will require the greatest attention and care from 
his spirit-guardians. But with a good foundation 
laid, there is every ground of expectation that 
these years will be safely passed, and the youth 
emerge into mature life with an equipment that 
is a guarantee of moral success. 

The child, as we have followed him, is equipped 
at twelve years of age with a strong body, which 
is now about to enter upon a period of growth 
more rapid than he has ever before known. He 
has developed a moral sense which is a capable 
guide in situations where he must act alone and 
without consultation, as they become necessary. 
He has learned respect for and obedience to his 
earthly parents, and they have made themselves 
a symbol of the Heavenly Father, whom he has 



PEEIODS OF DEVELOPMENT 143 

come to know through this means and the ever- 
present and ever-active influence of the Holy 
Spirit, who nses these symbols and teachings of 
earthly gnardian-spirits to make known the in- 
visible God and His purposes for men. We have 
no sure ground of confidence that the Holy Spirit 
performs this office in the absence of this human 
teaching. The spirit of obedience toward the par- 
ents has in it the elements and essential nature of 
yielding to the Higher Spirit, provided those par- 
ents have recognized their true office and relation 
to God and the child. The tastes of the character 
have been formed on a high plane and will not 
respond to appeals from lower levels. The feel- 
ings of the nature have been trained to be active 
in lines of sympathy and kindness. The control 
of the nature, both of the animal and rational, has 
been long disciplined and is now comparatively 
able. Virtuous habits have been formed which 
will steady him in trying hours when the spon- 
taneous moral energy of the moment would not 
be sufficient. The child enters a world that is not 
^^a friend to grace" indeed, where temptations 
are strong, and streams of social influence are 
against the ideals that have been implanted. But 
that world has no dominant ally within, although 
it will always seek an alliance with his animal 
nature. That physical nature, however, has also 
learned how to obey. It has been subjected to a 
strong control and to habits the bonds of which 
it can not of itself break. It can overcome only 



144 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

by some subjugation of the tastes and feelings, 
some tumultuous momentary onslaught, which 
may, indeed, secure a momentary victory; but 
even then through shame and contrition the usual 
and normal moral status may be re-established. 
Character has an inertia such that it does not 
radically and permanently change in a moment. 
This law is an impediment to sudden reforma- 
tion; but it is also the bulwark of the virtuous 
against deformation. 

That strange and unscientific factor called 
freedom of choice has not been nullified, and we 
therefore are unable to predict invariably what 
a soul will do. Some allowances have always to 
be made for this unpredictable element. Never- 
theless there are laws of spirit-formation which 
we may investigate and whose working we may 
observe; on the outcome of these we may rely in 
the general results of life. The parent who has 
wisely obeyed these laws may confidently depend 
upon expected results, and in case of any tem- 
porary disappointment may with good conscience 
ask the special assistance of society and the Holy 
Spirit of God to confer unusual grace for what 
seems an unusual and humanly unavoidable re- 
sult. 



CHAPTEE IX 

THE MOEAL SENSE 

I THINK we must say that the religious nature of 
the child is neutral until the dawning of the sense 
of ought, or of the sense of right and wrong. 
Even then it is premature to think of him as a 
complete spiritual being. The time of the dawn- 
ing of this moral sense is of very great interest 
and importance. Our reproaches and punish- 
ments must be adjusted to it. Stanley Hall says : 
^^For children all offenses are simply forbidden 
things, and the distinction between what is wrong 
or forbidden and what is criminal, and the per- 
spective that differentiates between different 
crimes, comes late, but moral comes even later 
than intellectual maturity.'' (^^Adolescence," I, 
403.) 

I know a little fellow who is sometimes caught 
doing what he has been forbidden to do. He is 
seventeen months old. When thus detected he will 
be found with his hands behind him, a picture of 
innocence. This presents a curious problem. Has 
he a conscience which he is disobeying? If not, 
why does he hide his action? I am inclined to 
answer: He has as yet no sense of right and 
wrong. His action, which seems so much like 
depravity, has in it no moral quality. The effort 

10 145 



146 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

to hide his action grows out of the knowledge that 
it has been forbidden, and the doing of forbidden 
things is associated with punishment. Professor 
Major in his observation of his own child noted 
that the little fellow had many devices for getting 
away his little brother 's playthings from him. It 
looked much like selfishness, but probably was 
not; for he was quite willing to let his brother 
have his own playthings. It was action which 
his opening powers suggested, that was not yet 
inhibited by the higher element, as yet undevel- 
oped, of unselfish or altruistic action. His own 
testimony concerning the child at this age is, ^^I 
have never seen a single trait which even the * un- 
embarrassed scientist' would call vicious. '^ Some 
day there must come from within a feeling that 
it is wrong to do wrong. At about the age of 
six or seven years the child acquires the sense of 
the conventional, which is the idea of the proper 
or a social standard. This looks very much like 
the beginnings of the sense of ought as controlled 
by others, so far as we can trace it to outward 
influence. The conventional may easily pass into 
the obligatory. ' ' With the beginnings of this con- 
sciousness the symbolic bent of the mind begins 
to yield a place to the higher and more conscious 
form of intellectual and moral activity." (W. T. 
Harris.) As to the nature and origin of con- 
science there is much difference of opinion among 
thoughtful writers. When one accepts the point 
of view of Divine Immanence, it is not so easy 
to distinguish the innate from the extra-personal. 



THE MOEAL SENSE 147 

But speaking as a religionist, we love to think 
of it as God's voice and man's voice— God's voice 
in man's voice, and adopt the language of Kant. 
He says : ' ' There are two things that fill my mind, 
the oftener and longer I dwell npon them, with 
ever-fresh and ever-growing admiration and awe : 
the starry heavens above me and the moral law 
within me. Neither is veiled in mystery or lost 
in immensity so that I need to seek them beyond 
the sphere of vision and merely snrmise that they 
are there. I see them before me and link them 
immediately with the conscionsness of my exist- 
ence. . . . The second begins from my invisible 
self, my personality, and exhibits me in a world 
which has true infinity, but which is traceable only 
by the understanding." (Eucken: ^^ Problem of 
Human Life," 445.) Goethe must have had a 
similar faculty in mind when he speaks of that 
sentiment ** which none brings with him into the 
world, but on which it entirely depends whether 
or not a man shall be in all respects a man — the 
sentiment of reverence." (do., 474.) But, how- 
ever mysterious its origin or inexplicable its na- 
ture, the conscience never speaks more authori- 
tatively than in the first years after its manifes- 
tation. W. E. Gladstone has told a beautiful story 
of it when it spoke to him as a stranger whom 
he did not recognize. It was when he was a lit- 
tle boy in his fourth year. He lifted a stick to 
kill a tortoise. ' ' But all at once, ' ' he says, * ^ some- 
thing checked my arm, and at once a voice within 
me said, clear and loud, *It is wrong.' I held 



148 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

my uplifted stick in wonder at the new emotion — 
the consciousness of an involuntary but inward 
restraint upon my actions — till the tortoise van- 
ished from my sight. I hastened home and told 
the tale to my mother, and asked what it was 
that told me it was wrong. She wiped a tear 
from her eye with her apron and, taking me up 
in her arms, said: ^Some men call it conscience, 
but I prefer to call it the voice of God in the soul 
of man. If you listen and obey it, then it will 
speak clearer and clearer, and always guide you 
right ; but if you turn a deaf ear or disobey, then 
it will fade out little by little and leave you all 
in the dark without a guide. Your life depends 
upon this voice.' Then she went her way about 
her affairs, but no event of my life made a more 
deep and lasting impression upon me." This 
voice of God may at first speak only the things 
that are permitted; it may associate itself with 
the things that cause no pain; there may be pri- 
marily and even permanently some confusion, but 
its imperative is unmistakable; something in it 
will be heard above the din and clamor of earthly 
voices. Macbeth is not untrue to life when he 
asks: 

Whence is that knocking? 

How is 't with me when every noise appalls me? 

What hands are here? Ha ! they pluck out my eyes. 

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood 

Clean from my hands? No ; this my hand will rather 

The multitudinous seas incarnadine, 

Making the green one red. (Macbeth, act ii, sc. 2.) 



THE MORAL SENSE 149 

It is thonght by some that this moral faculty 
is an imitative function and has its origination 
in obedience. The child first feels the compulsion 
of command from his parents and from that gains 
the idea of obedience. This becomes a well-fixed 
attitude in his relation to them. But he will after 
awhile observe that they too are obedient. They 
sometimes say that they must do things or must 
not do things which they do not want to do or do 
want to do. In the parents the child notes — rather 
confusedly, of course, though more clearly when 
oft repeated — that the parents are obeying some 
unseen source of obligation. They say : We must ; 
we must not. We ought ; we ought not. An un- 
seen authority is felt by them whom they obey. 
These instances of obligation come to be reduced 
to rule or principle, and after years the child has 
been impressed with a law of obligation that is 
different from the authority of his parents. It is 
very probable that this sense of moral obligation 
would be very seriously impaired where the par- 
ents act capriciously, always as they pleased, and 
were not themselves obedient to a Power not them- 
selves. 

Another root of this same origination is thus 
stated by Baldwin: *^ Suppose a boy who has once 
obeyed a command to let an apple alone, coming 
to confront the apple again when there is no one 
present to make him obey. There is his private, 
greedy, habitual self, eying the apple; there is 
also the spontaneously suggestible, accommodat- 



150 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

ing, imitating self over against it, mildly prompt- 
ing him to do as his father said and let the apple 
alone ; and there is — or would be, if the obedience 
had taught him no new thought of self — the quick 
victory of the former. But now a lesson has been 
learned. There arises a thought of one who 
obeys, who has no struggle in carrying out the 
behest of the father. This may be vague; his 
habit may be yet weak in the absence of persons 
and penalties, but it is there, however weak. And 
it is no longer the faint imitation of an obedient 
self which he does not understand. It carries 
within it, it is true, all the struggle of the first 
obedience, all the painful protests of the private 
greedy self, all the smoke of the earlier battle- 
field. But while he hesitates it is not now merely 
the balance of the old forces that makes him 
hesitate; it is the sense of the new, better, obe- 
dient self hovering before him. A few such 
fights, and he begins to grow accustomed to the 
presence of something in him which represents 
his father, mother, or in general the lawgiving 
personality.'^ (^'Social and Ethical Interpreta- 
tions," 54.) The remaining step to be taken is to 
eject this representative of authority into all 
others of the family and all others generally. 

This view of the origin of conscience may 
shock those who have regarded it as a purely 
extra-natural production. But it need not disturb 
our view that it is God's voice, however unsettling 
it may be to its sometimes supposed infallibility. 



THE MOEAL SENSE 151 

We are apt to credit the doing of those things to 
God, the method of doing of which is hidden from 
our view. Then some day, when we look through 
a Httle glass and discover God in the doing of it, 
our first exclamation is, 0, it was not God, after 
all, who did it; it was somebody or something 
else! But this second thought is our blunder. 
God does it just the same when He puts a parent 
at the heart of the task, and through them accom- 
plishes His purpose. May it exalt our view of 
parenthood when we see that they are vitally con- 
nected with this problem, and in their absence it 
is never well done ; nor is it well done when they, 
careless of their task, do not recognize that they 
are in the place of God to their child. 

What particular actions are wrong will be de- 
termined by the commandments from his parents 
until the time when he may have an understand- 
ing of the Higher Parent. Then His command- 
ments will also be regarded as the content of 
moral conduct.* 

The dawning of this spiritual sense is com- 
paratively early, though no fixed age can be 
named that will hold for all children. Some chil- 
dren have it as early as four years ; others as late 
as seven; others possibly later. If we should 

* "Poor soul, here for so little, cast among so many hardships, filled with desires 
BO incommensurate, and so inconsistent, savagely surrounded, savagely descended, ir- 
redeemably condemned to prey upon his fellows' lives; who should have blamed him 
had he been of a piece with his destiny? To touch the heart of his mystery, we find in 
him one thought strange to the point of lunacy; the thought of duty; the thought of 
something owing to himself, to his neighbor, to his God; an ideal of decency to which he 
would rise, if it were possible; a limit of shame, below which if it were possible he will 
not stoop." — (R. L. Stevenson; "Pulvis et Umbra," quoted by Tyler.) 



152 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

name six years, we would find it accompanied with 
marked physiological changes : it is the period of 
the second dentition; the brain has achieved its 
adult size and weight ; now is the time of reduced 
growth, and increased activity and power to re- 
sist both disease and fatigue. (Hall: ^^Adoles- 
cence," II, 451.) There is no other such marked 
year between the third year and puberty. 

J. E. Street, of Clark University, conducted 
an examination of one hundred and eighty-three 
persons, from which he drew the conclusion: 
*^ There was nothing to show that conscience 
played any great factor in life before the age of 
nine, and very little mention was made of it be- 
fore thirteen. The cases, however, are altogether 
too few to make any generalized conclusion con- 
cerning the age at which conscience becomes a 
potent element in the individual. Yet it may be 
premised that it does not reveal its existence at 
as early an age as many would believe. The 
writer knows a child in whom it was abnormally 
developed at the age of three. Impulse governs 
most of the activities of early childhood." (A. 
MacDonald: * ^Experimental Child Study," 1339.) 

"When we reflect that brain cells are not suffi- 
ciently formed for purposes of intellectuality un- 
til about the sixth year, and that conscience should 
follow reflection, we must not expect conscience 
to be a factor before that age, and then only in 
its germinal form. As to what things a child's 



THE MORAL SENSE 153 

conscience shall say, we must know what has been 
taught by its parents and teachers. 

MacDonald calls attention to another impor- 
tant point when he says : ' ' Moral training is not 
the establishment of mere moral habits, as the 
ethical people advocate, but is the unfolding and 
widening of the deeper instincts, particularly the 
emotions, and has its roots in the religious senti- 
ments that so early pervade child-life. . . . The 
parent stands in such relation to the child as to 
enable him to seize upon the deed germ and so 
to nourish it that it will produce the beautiful 
plant of a pure, noble character." 

This conception of the conscience assumes (1) 
a primal instinct that may be unfolded in child- 
hood. This is not a moral endowment, implying 
merit or demerit, but an endowment of the nature, 
which when exercised opens in moral character. 
(2) The control of the action of the child directs 
the unfolding instinct or emotional power to the 
good or the evil character. The conscience fac- 
ulty may have no content, but it does have a cer- 
tain texture which forms a basis of moral re- 
action from the influences which shall come upon 
it after a while. 

The important point is: not that we should 
adopt some time for the application of a religious 
formula and judgment concerning its spiritual 
relation to God, but that we should regard the 
moral awakening, whenever it comes, as a phe- 



154 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

nomenon realized and treat the child accordingly. 
Just as we observe the awakening of self-con- 
sciousness and the faculty of reasoning, so we 
should observe the awakening of the moral fac- 
ulty and seek at that point to have it choose right- 
eousness as such. That choice for the child is 
tantamount to the choosing of God. It has all the 
significance for the spiritual relation to God for 
the child that conversion has in riper years for 
the adult. I do not mean to say that a child can 
at that time make a 'choice that carries it un- 
changingly into the future, as the adult may. The 
child's nature requires that this choice be con- 
firmed by every succeeding choice. But the choice 
for the moment contains the child's religious re- 
lation for the moment. If that choice is confirmed 
ever afterwards, the child is an acceptable child 
of God ; if a contrary choice is subsequently made, 
it will need to seek forgiveness, just as the adult 
does when he falls from grace. This moral con- 
dition has the childish element of instability; but 
it has no taint of sin upon it. The instability 
suggests the child's moral dependence upon par- 
ents and teachers. It can not live its moral life 
alone any more than it can live its physical life 
alone. The parent is the child's moral supple- 
ment. 



CHAPTI^E X 

THE SCIENTIFIC EEA OF RELIGIOUS IITSTRUCTIOIT 

There are other elements than the dawn of the 
moral sense that enter into the question, When 
is the ideal time for religious instruction! The 
period for the formation of habits is from the 
third to the seventh year. Character, from one 
point of view, is the by-product of actions, and 
habitual actions thus are of most intense impor- 
tance. Perhaps it was from some such knowledge 
as this that caused that student of this question, 
the most profound yet produced in America, Hor- 
ace Bushnell, to say that more could be done to 
make or mar the eternal destiny of a child be- 
fore three years of age than could be done after- 
wards. Eemembering, then, the importance of 
these early years, and then from six years on to 
thirteen or fourteen, we have the period of op- 
portunity for parent or teacher to lead a soul to 
Christ. After sixteen we may compare their res- 
cue to that of the passengers wrecked in the ocean, 
clinging to planks and timbers. Some of them 
will be picked up ; but it all seems accidental, and 
no rule can be named as to how it may be accom- 
plished. There probably always has been in the 

155 



156 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

Eoman Catholic Church a scientific basis for the 
teaching of religion. Our objection to that 
Church can not be so much because of their meth-. 
ods of instruction as to the subject matter of their 
teaching. In method they are able to teach us 
very much. Their adherents, even without the 
strong religious passion that a personal yielding 
to Christ gives, are very tenacious to the faith 
and practices of their Church. 

The evangelistic method can not be called 
scientific ; nor can it be called ideal. It is greatly 
to be commended as a method to be used with 
adults who have lost their opportunity of scientific 
instruction. But its continuance under present 
conditions is losing to the Protestant Church two- 
thirds of its children, and presents the most 
alarming and discouraging view of Christianity 
in the world. The greatest discouragement that 
we face is not in China, with its unknown num- 
ber of millions to be evangelized, indoctrinated, 
and converted; but rather the fact that here in 
America from our Christian homes and Sunday 
schools sixty per cent of our children never be- 
come Christian. When we look at the means nec- 
essary to hold them, the neglect that we observe 
is as significant as the result which we deplore. 
They are not receiving the instruction, during this 
ideal period when they might be won, which is in 
any degree sufficient to insure that they will be- 
come Christians. They are allowed first to be 
lost, and then, when character's choice has been 



THE EELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION 157 

made, a belated and necessarily ineffectual effort 
is made to win them back. 

Says Dr. David G. Downey : ^ ^ The child holds 
the future, and the only way to save the future 
is to save the child. We can not save the child 
by allowing him to go to the devil in his youth- 
hood, and then attempt by special and spectacu- 
lar methods to win him back to God in his man- 
hood. Our method of approach to the child-heart 
and mind must be in harmony with the well-estab- 
lished laws and principles that govern the child ^s 
growth. Religious development must be made 
not a matter of miracle and magic, but a part 
of the child ^s normal development, just as nat- 
ural and normal as his development physically or 
mentally. God has ordained a right time and a 
right way for developing a child's physical life. 
It is not a matter of chance, caprice, or magic. 
It is a matter of care, feeding, exercise, and en- 
vironment. Every parent understands, and up 
to the measure of his understanding co-operates 
with the divine law. God also has ordained a 
right time and a right way for developing the 
child's mental life. It is not a matter of chance, 
caprice, or magic. It is simply a matter of in- 
struction, guidance, and teaching at the right 
time. Every parent and every teacher under- 
stands, and as far as possible co-operates with 
the divine law. . . . Let that time pass unim- 
proved, and the child is intellectually lost. . . . 
Has God ordained a right time and a right way 



158 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

for developing the child's physical life? for de- 
veloping the child's mental life? and has left his 
spiritual life withont plan or care — a, matter of 
chance, caprice, magic, miracle, or whim? As- 
suredly not. Here as elsewhere, nay, more, just 
here especially God has a right time and a right 
way. ' ' 

It is probably not sufficiently realized that 
youth is the great crime-producing period. The 
County Court of Kings, New York, for the year 
1908 passed sentence on 950 persons convicted of 
crime. Of these 491 were under twenty years of 
age and 283 were between twenty-one and thirty, 
and only 176 were above thirty years of age. In 
New York State in one year the superintendent 
of instruction reported 179,000 arrests of children 
under fifteen years of age. In France it is noted 
that during recent years juvenile depravity and 
criminality have greatly increased. They have 
passed a law that recognizes that every criminal 
under eighteen is still a child, and as such unfit 
for prison. Houses of correction are established, 
the distinguishing feature of which is, as far as 
possible to keep those convicted in touch with the 
home, recognizing it as containing the only suffi- 
cient elements for character formation. ^^Pos- 
sessing as they do the ear, the heart, and the sym- 
pathy of the child, parents have it within their 
power to develop the child into almost whatever 
they may wish. Hence if they would get back to 
the Hebrew conception of the family, and would 



THE EELIGIOUS INSTEUCTION 159 

devote themselves as diligently to the nurture of 
their children as they do now to the ways of 
fashionable and business life or, better still, with 
all the solicitousness that they exercise in the 
rearing of their horses and dogs, the problem of 
the moral regeneration of the race would be most 
thoroughly solved." (MacDonald, 1342.) 

A religious curriculum, embracing morning 
and evening prayer, attendance upon Sunday 
school and Church, and daily instruction in the 
religious life, would not be too much to withstand 
the tides of opposition to Christianity flowing all 
about them in our land. It is probable that mod- 
em times present many more allurements away 
from the Christian life than did several centuries 
ago. Yet we are far from equaling some of the 
Christians of those more simple times. The spir- 
itual descendants of John Huss showed a care- 
fulness and zeal which is not found in modern 
Church customs. The important connection be- 
tween the Church and the home was thoroughly 
recognized. The membership of the congregation 
was divided into three sections : the beginners, the 
advanced, and the perfected. The first section 
was the children, who received separate instruc- 
tion in the Bible. The instruction received in the 
Church was supplementary to and a review of 
that which was carried on in the home. Officers 
of the Church visited the homes regularly to see 
that the plan of home instruction was carried out, 
and reported the conditions to the pastor. * * This 



160 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

home training consisted in a personal examina- 
tion of the children by the father, usually during 
or after the midday meal, to discover what they 
remembered, and how much they understood of 
the religious teaching they had received, either 
at school or any of the many services of the week. 
From very few of the Church services were the 
children excused. . . . Morning and evening 
family devotions were also conscientiously kept 
up. ' ' Several services were held during the Sab- 
bath ; one of them might overrun an hour, but the 
afternoon and evening services were scrupulously 
held to thirty minutes. During special seasons 
of the year the lessons suggested by them were 
carefully and impressively taught. During the 
year the whole Bible was gone over in outline. 
The parochial schools, which were held during the 
week, also made the teaching of the religious and 
moral life of great prominence. In view of this 
careful training of the children we are better able 
to understand the profound impressions that the 
Moravians have made upon the world. 

Moreover, an indispensable condition is that 
children should not be associated with vice during 
these early years. No cost is too great that they 
may be shielded during those years when nature 
formed them to imitate what they see. It must 
be frankly admitted that this world is ill-adapted 
for the moral or even the mental education of the 
child. What are the sights that meet his eye as 
he goes to and from school! The great posters 



THE EELIGIOUS INSTEUCTION 161 

on the walls and the billboards portray a world 
that he is not fitted to enter. Evil persons of 
adult years will try to engage his attention and 
his interest in their evil world. Children of his 
own years from the homes and slums of vice en- 
act a life on the street that is very suggestive to 
his open mind. What comes to him from the 
newspaper that enters every home? Certainly 
very little that is fitted for his eyes and thought — 
pictures and stories of crime and sin. The comic 
supplement to the Sunday newspaper is his espe- 
cial enemy. It is gotten up to catch his eye and 
engage his attention, but under the guidance of 
no moral purpose. One writer has recently said 
of it: **It glorifies the smart child, proficient 
in monkey tricks; the cheeky, disrespectful, and 
irreverent child, who ^ guys' his elders and bet- 
ters; the libertine child, of silly, humoring 
parents." From the moral and religious point 
of view our modern world is very unfriendly 
to the child. He has no defenses in himself. 
He knows not his danger. Ofttimes parents do 
not comprehend that they are purposed to be his 
defense against moral invasion as really as they 
are against the invasion of physical danger and 
want. Many who pride themselves on the physical 
provision which they make for their children, 
allow them to suffer the merciless moral treatment 
of all the sin-traps of the street and public life 
that surges around our homes, seeking for en- 
trance. In how many instances are tender chil- 
li 



162 MOEAIi CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

dren turned into the street to be the easy victims 
of its vice unavoidably visible ! How many homes 
provide the instruction that we have noted as the 
minimum of necessity! Certainly the percentage 
of cases where these conditions are found is not 
as large as the percentage of children who be- 
come Christian. Many a child in a nominally 
Christian home has never heard his father's or 
his mother's voice in prayer. One of the most 
precious memories and most potent influences on 
life is thus lost. God is better to us than our 
plans and work. Those homes which carefully 
train their children with this daily and painstak- 
ing instruction secure the Christian character of 
their children ; but those which depend upon their 
conversion through the agency of evangelistic 
methods are losing them in large masses. 



CHAPTER XI 



Chuech history hardly affords a more striking 
illustration of the conflict between an instinctive 
spiritual tendency and the barriers erected by 
groping theologians than the manner in which the 
baptism of children has been treated by the Chris- 
tian world. The New Testament is silent con- 
cerning it, and yet the teaching of Jesus has been 
arrayed on both sides of the conflict. The state- 
ment of John 3:5, ^ ^ Except one be born of water 
and the Spirit, he can not see the Kingdom of 
God,'' seemed to shut children out of the King- 
dom, their original sinfulness having been as- 
sumed. On the other hand, the statement, *^of 
such is the Kingdom of heaven, ' ' was in direct op- 
position to this. Its plain meaning could not be 
evaded; but it could be neglected by those who 
could not make it harmonize with their belief. 
For the most part the Church has accepted both 
statements and emphasized both in the most in- 
harmonious fashion. The custom of children's' 
baptism probably had its roots in Jewish tradi- 
tions and practices, and the fear that unbaptized 
persons would be excluded from the Kingdom for- 

163 



164 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

ever, in harmony with the well-nigh unchallenged 
phrase, extra ecclesiam nulla solus. It grew early 
and extensively in the early Church, and at times 
has held an almost universal sway. 

It has always been met, however, by two or 
more beliefs that seemed to make it untenable. 
The first was that baptism is for the ^^ remission 
of sins.'' If this sin was original sin, of course 
it was logical for the child to be baptized as early 
as possible; but if it were for the sins actually 
committed by us, then it was best to defer bap- 
tism to a period as late in life as possible. Or 
if it were for both original and actual sins, as 
many held, the latter position is inevitable. This 
latter course was recommended by many and was 
the one pursued by Constantino the Great. More- 
over, it was regarded peculiarly sacrilegious for 
a baptized person to commit sin, while an un- 
baptized person was privileged in sin. Augustin 
quotes the current saying, ^*Let him alone, let 
him do as he likes, for he is yet unbaptized. ' ' 
(*^ Confessions,'' I, xi.) The other belief was 
that baptism was a sign of admission into the 
Kingdom, which could be entered by those only 
who personally by faith accepted Jesus Christ. 
As this faith is impossible to children, they could 
not enter, and logic would require that they should 
•be refused baptism, the initiatory rite. This atti- 
tude toward the subject has played a much larger 
role than the other, and is a very prevalent ob- 
stacle to the custom even to this day. It has been 



CHILDEEN'S BAPTISM 165 

met in the history of the subject by the assertion 
of a sort of vicarions faith, or of unconscious 
faith on the part of the child. On the one hand, 
those who were sponsors for the child, parents 
or god-parents, were supposed to be able to ex- 
ercise a faith that was available for him. On 
the other hand, some supposed that a sort of un- 
conscious faith was exercised by the child. Thus 
Calvin taught, *^ Infants may have infused into 
them a kind of faith and knowledge, though not 
ours.'' This, however, as has been pointed out 
by Harnack, was an abandonment of the Protes- 
tant view of faith, and has not exercised so very 
great influence on the practice. 

The High Church idea of baptism, which may 
be called baptismal regeneration, has had a very 
great part in the defense of this custom. It is 
in the realm of the mystical, if not the magical, 
the mysterious, approaching the superstitious, if 
it does not actually reach it. It tries to escape 
the charge of mechanism in spiritual things, that 
the sheer application of water in itself works the 
regeneration of the spiritual being. I will not 
attempt to state the form of this disclaimer, for 
to me it has no validity. To its defenders the 
modus operandi becomes a matter of great im- 
portance. It must be the application of water, 
and not some other liquid, as milk or wine. Great 
care must be exercised that it be not repeated. 
If in doubt about this, one must preface the ad- 
ministration by the phrase, **If thou hast not 



166 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

been baptized." As the ordinance works of it- 
self, it is valid even though it may have been per- 
formed by a heretic, etc., etc. Innocent III held 
that, as sin came to infants without their con- 
sciousness, so they could be freed from it by the 
power of the sacrament. In accordance with this 
line of reasoning, he thought that baptism would 
be effective upon men asleep or mad, if they had 
previously expressed a purpose of receiving it. 
(Vid. Hastings: ''Encyc. of Eeligion and Ethics," 
II, 398.) 

The Council of Trent, building its doctrine 
upon the tenet of Original Sin, made one distinc- 
tion of value; though this distinction, so far as 
I know, has never been developed into a clearer 
expression of the normal human condition in 
morals. Its teaching is thus represented: ^^The 
guilt of original sin is removed in baptism, and 
the regenerate are no longer sinful in the eyes of 
God, though there remains in them a root of con- 
cupiscence, which is left for them to struggle 
against. This concupiscence must not be called 
* sin ' if by the term it is implied that there is any- 
thing in the regenerate which can properly be 
called sin. It is sin only in so far as it comes 
from sin and leads to sin." (do., 399.) This 
point, that sin remained after baptism, which was 
supposed to remove it, had caused much trouble. 
Some were bold enough logicians to simply re- 
ject the fact. Angus tin held that baptism ' ' means 
the breaking down of the sinful habit, the be- 



CHILDEEN'S BAPTISM 167 

stowal of a special grace of resistance, bnt not 
the entire removal of the enemy/' Hillary had 
to warn his readers against supposing that bap- 
tism wonld restore them to the innocence of child- 
hood. Baptism in the second centnry was re- 
garded as a peculiarly strong form of exorcism. 
*^Just as the Eed Sea drowned Pharaoh, so bap- 
tism drowns the devil out of a man." 

In general all these teachers and Churches, 
which taught infant baptism, regarded confirma- 
tion, or some other step to be taken when the 
child came to years of responsibility, as a neces- 
sity, which in effect is a substitute for believers' 
baptism. 

It is little wonder that a custom that has been 
defended by an appeal to such absurdities and 
unfounded necessities, by such conflicting argu- 
ments and disregard of personal history, should 
fail of general acceptance and understanding, and 
be assailed with such sarcasm as this custom has 
met. And yet Christianity would be of little 
value if these attacks upon the custom were in- 
vincible.. If Christianity is not for the child, then 
one-half of the human race are cut off from its 
benefits at a stroke: for one-half never grow up 
to be adults. But this is not the worst aspect of 
this opposition ; it will have only a disputed value 
for the other half. If Christianity is not for the 
child, it is hardly adjustable to normal humanity, 
and will ever remain a little ' ' lean-to ' ' to life, the 
worth-while-ness of which will be dubious. If 



168 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

Christianity is normal to human life, it must cover 
the whole of it, and especially that part in which 
character is formed. If the child can come to a 
normal human spiritual stature without the help 
of the Church, the acceptance of Christ by the 
adult is emphatically superfluous. But to admit 
that the child may receive the benefits of Chris- 
tianity, and yet refuse it the ministry of this rite, 
universally regarded as initiatory, is an indefen- 
sible position. How can it run the course, if it 
never enters upon if? We would place the bap- 
tism of children in a central position, and at the 
same time divorce it from the mystical, irrational, 
unrealizable ministrations that have been claimed 
for it. Its benefits in plain sight are sufficient to 
bind it upon us with indissoluble bands. "With 
the cancellation of the doctrine of hereditary sin 
we at a stroke get rid of a mass of contradictions 
and absurdities. However the phrase, ^^for the 
remission of sins," may be interpreted, it creates 
more difficulties than it dissolves to say it is either 
for the sins which we inherit from Adam or, so 
far as it is a physical act, that it has the least 
effect in washing away actual sins. Biblical in- 
terpretation is never justified in creating more 
difficulties than it finds. If Biblical phrase is so 
mysterious that we can not penetrate its meaning, 
let it remain a mystery; but let there be no obli- 
gation created by the exegete that compels a be- 
liever to accept what he knows can not be true 
without the destruction of fundamental principles 



CHILDREN'S BAPTISM 169 

in morals, and intellectual dishonesty or suicide. 
There are certain conceptions of infant bap- 
tism that appear to us as little better than gross 
superstition on the one hand, or based on imag- 
inary necessities on the other. They dwell in the 
region of mystical relations and imaginary bene- 
fits. It is impossible to trace the moral benefit to 
children, as supposed, in their actual life. The 
announcement of these views has doubtless done 
much to discredit the true benefits of baptism. 
Some speak of the good children derive from it 
as coming to them under the influence of a cov- 
enant. For myself, I can not see that the idea, 
which seems to bind some formal obligation on 
to God, adds much to the notion of His universal 
love for all His creatures. Furthermore, omitting 
the idea of their inherent sinfulness, and there 
seems to be no barrier to be overcome by a com- 
pact to the full display of His love and fellowship. 
But to those who seem to see some force in it 
I would quote the words of F. D. Maurice. ^^I am 
deeply persuaded," he says, ''that a covenant pre- 
supposes an actual relation ; and therefore object 
wholly to those phrases which speak of the rela- 
tion as if it were constituted by the covenant." 
C'Life," I, 209.) 

The Anabaptists of the sixteenth century ''in- 
stead of infant baptism had a ceremony in which 
children were consecrated to God." (Lindsay: 
"Reformation," II, 435.) This seems to us to 
secure the central idea quite effectively, while it 



170 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

betrays a needless reservation of tlie ordinance, 
as if it had some ulterior benefits. Baptism of 
infants can mean only two things : First, a recog- 
nition on the part of others of the right of the 
child in the Church. No spiritual benefit can come 
to it directly from the physical act of applying 
water, whether in this form or that. The custom 
of baptizing a child which is about to die is com- 
parable to the heathen idea of salvation by some 
utterly non-moral influence. But so long as bap- 
tism is regarded as a rite of entrance into the 
Church it should not be denied to children. From 
the beginning they are in the invisible Church, 
and the visible Church is making good her claims 
to a vital work in the world when she undertakes 
with all zeal to have all whom Christ receives 
enter by some visible ordinance into her fold. 

But in the second place, there are some bene- 
fits to the child of a more dynamic character. 
They are none the less because they are indirect. 
The baptism of the child is an act of the parents 
by which they acknowledge the divine relation of 
the child to God already established, the divine 
origin of the child, the divine ownership of the 
child, and the obligation laid upon them of se- 
curing to him a divine destiny. The benefits that 
come to him are from the vividness and vitality 
of these impressions upon the minds of the par- 
ents. Should they be lacking entirely, and bap- 
tism be given through the influence of some ficti- 



CHILDREN'S BAPTISM ITl 

tious ecclesiastical valuation, the benefit will be 
nothing. But if these convictions are present in 
active form, then the child will each day receive 
the benefit of that consecration which gave it back 
to God and which abides in the ever-working vi- 
sion that this is a holy child and may not be dealt 
with as if it were in the sole power of the parents 
to do with as pleasure or caprice or unholy am- 
bition dictate. Where this consecration is lacking, 
the ordinance is an empty and meaningless form; 
its only effect is to work a delusion. 

Children 's baptism, then, demands certain con- 
ditions, without which it is only an empty super- 
stition. If the parents understand its nature and 
its limitations ; if they will undertake to carry out 
its implications ; if they comprehend that its spir- 
itual working is vicarious, coming to the child 
through them, then its observance will be fraught 
with the largest possible blessing and spiritual 
fruitage. It is but the first act of a program of 
spiritual education and influence that, through a 
wonderful and divine arrangement, enables the 
parents to be in very deed the father and the 
mother of the spiritual form of the child, and not 
merely the cause of its physical structure. This 
assumes a previous instruction and preparation 
that probably are not usually given, but without 
which it will be as profitless and mocking as it 
is sacrilegious. Could this be adequately under- 
stood we would enter upon a period which would 



172 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

not, as now, lose to ns seventy-five per cent of our 
boys and a large per cent of onr girls into the 
non-religions life. According to onr nse of it will 
this practice be the most effective or the most 
useless religious instrument of all the ordinances 
of the Church. 



CHAPTEE XII 

HOW CAN A CHILD BE SAVED? 

Some years ago the writer was attending a preach- 
ers ' meeting in a Western city. The popular pas- 
tor of the largest Church in the city came into 
the room just as some brother was announcing 
with great confidence the opinion that no one 
could get into the Kingdom of God, or get to 
heaven, without being converted. Our friend 
heard the statement, and as he swung into his 
seat, called out, ^^That 's my sentiment.'' The 
discussion drifted on for half an hour, and then 
this pastor arose, very subdued, and said with 
much feeling that he had lost two children some 
years before, and he always thought that they 
had gone to heaven. ''But if what is said here 
to-day be true, then I do not know where they 
have gone." This seemed to put a new face on 
the matter. If conversion is the only door that 
admits people to heaven, then only those who 
can exercise personal faith in Jesus Christ can be 
saved. The question is not so serious in regard 
to those who live to mature years and have the 
chance of complying with the conditions admitting 
to conversion. But it was formerly said that one- 

173 



174 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

half the human race die before they attain seven 
years, and these are by their situation shut out 
from heaven forever, unless a future probation is 
provided for them, which last supposition is gen- 
erally unacceptable to those who stand for the 
doctrine of conversion. Some try to relieve the 
situation to a degree by indicating that children 
may be converted when very young, suggesting 
cases of conversion even at four years of age. 
The Rev. E. P. Hammond, recently translated, 
gives a number of instances of children converted 
when four years of age, and one at the extremely 
early age of two and a half. If these cases could 
be multiplied manifold there would still remain a 
great question in our minds concerning those not 
thus reached. 

Many inquiries arise in our minds concerning 
this question of child-conversion. They have such 
life-interest to us all that no one will feel like 
speaking lightly of the solution that another may 
present. Psychologists have serious misgivings 
concerning the procedure of these early conver- 
sions. They seem to violate the very nature of 
the child-mind. How can there be the conscious- 
ness of sin which is involved in the process? 
That the sense of sorrow may be brought about 
by suggestion and sympathy is well known. May 
there not be something artificial about the whole 
procedure? That many children thus begin their 
religious life is undoubted. One is tempted to 
say, Better this method, even if involved in mis- 



HOW CAN A CHILD BE SAVED? 175 

taken suppositions, than the inattention to their 
religious life which widely prevails. But while 
we refrain from denunciation of what may be a 
mistake, may we not inquire, Is there not a better 
way, based upon truer psychology and purer 
doctrine? 

That better way for the child that lives to 
grow up, we will consider when we come to speak 
of the ^' Birth from Above.'' But what shall we 
say concerning those who do not live to grow up 1 

One of the answers is. Baptize them : this will 
cure the sin of their nature and admit them into 
heaven. We have already paid our respects to 
that teaching. It is a belated doctrine proceeding 
out of the night of superstition. We need add 
no more.* 

Another answer is : God cuts short the work in 
righteousness ; sanctifies them, and takes them to 
heaven. We confess ourselves unable to put any 
meaning into these words. Can it mean that 
God accelerates the mental and moral develop- 

* The following is from a sermon preached apparently only thirteen years ago, 
published in the Homiletic Review. I will not name the preacher, but it will show that 
I have not misstated the position that was held by orthodox preachers no longer ago 
than that. To my ear it sounds from very far away. I do not remember to have heard 
anything like it recently. 

"By nature they (children) are in Adam, and not in Christ; they are the children 
of the world, and not of God. It is a divine transaction (by which they are made par- 
takers of life) — a new life is given in holy baptism. That which is born of the flesh must 
be 'born again of water and the Spirit.' What has been promised to parents and their 
seed by the Holy Ghost shall be actually conferred. It is called the 'washing of regen- 
eration.' With this infants have no more to do than with their natural generation. 
That is an act of God in His own appointed way, and the life thus commenced underlies 
and precedes all consciousness, all thought, faith, hope, and charity. Children may 
regain in Jesus Christ all they lost in Adam. Those who are baptized into Christ have put 
on Christ, and if afterwards they change their relation to God it must be by departing 
from Him." 



176 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

ment of these cliildren, so that they can enter 
upon conditions of faith and acceptance of Christ, 
and that, this being accomplished, their natnre is 
regenerated and they are taken into heaven? 
These seem to be the necessities of the case on 
the assumption of inherited sinfulness. We un- 
dertake to say that even God can not do that. 
Moral character is a personal achievement, and 
can not be thus cut short, nor any short cuts taken 
in its attainment. Moreover, the whole repre- 
sentation is the promulgation of a theory in dire 
distress. It is much easier to disbelieve the whole 
theory, to start with, than to stretch our credulity 
to such limits. Reject the doctrine of original 
sin, and it serves no useful purpose. 

The answer that these children are sent to 
perdition, having never done evil, requires noth- 
ing but a reference to it. There was a day when 
it required argument ; but the sun of that day will 
never rise again. It passes our comprehension 
that such an article of faith ever could have had an 
hour^s lodgment in human belief. That man could 
ever have thought so vilely of God is a mystery 
which can never be fully explained. That belief 
has been driven forth, not so much by argument 
or presentation of proof texts as by direct insight. 
Whatever else is true, that can not be true. We 
may forever despair of an answer to our ques- 
tion; but this answer is forever barred. 

The only other answer that can be presented 
on the assumption of hereditary sin is the answer 



HOW CAN A CHILD BE SAVED? ITT 

of a Future Probation. The argument runs 
something like this: None can be saved except 
those who personally accept Jesus Christ as their 
Savior. Children and some others can not accept 
Jesus Christ here; therefore an opportunity will 
be presented for them to accept Him in a future 
world. They will remain in the Intermediate 
State until they have passed through the moral 
conditions which are denied to them here. 

This doctrine, on the assumption of original 
sin, always seemed to me, since I first came in 
contact with it, exceedingly reasonable. I never 
was a convert to it, because I concluded that, while 
it seemed unobjectionable from its relation to 
children, yet there is not enough data to pro- 
nounce it proven. But from our point of view it 
is not a necessary solution. 

Our own solution of the problem may be pre- 
sented in a few words: Children are in an ac- 
ceptable relation to God when they come into the 
world. That relation they can not annul until they 
come to years of moral accountability and rebel 
against Him. In the meantime, if He should take 
them to Himself, we have only the problem of 
their development in righteousness under an en- 
vironment more favorable than here. That prob- 
lem lies outside our investigation; we need not 
enter upon its discussion. 



12 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE BIRTH FROM ABOVE 

We have no doubt of the spiritual birth that comes 
in a moment of time. We have no word of dis- 
couragement for those who are seeking to secure 
the instantaneous conversion of adults from sin 
to holiness. Let that problem be considered and 
advanced as much as possible by those who have 
responsibility for it. All we need to say just now 
is that the workings of the Holy Spirit are not 
confined to it, and that manifestly it does not ap- 
ply to infants and children. The unconscious 
birth from above as experienced by children is 
scarcely in need of defense; it has been experi- 
enced by so many eminent Christians. G. Camp- 
bell Morgan ^^can not recall any definite time of 
his conversion. He believes that the gift of grace 
may be unconsciously received, especially by chil- 
dren who have been taught from earliest years 
that they belong to Christ. '* Another writer, a 
profound student of this question, says: *^To one 
who has handled the material of these psycho- 
logical studies it becomes very clear that at the 
conclusion of the adolescent period, or shortly 
after, no important difference can be discovered 

178 



THE BIETH FEOM ABOVE 179 

between the persons who experienced a conscious 
conversion and those who have simply kept up 
their religious growth. More than that, it is cer- 
tain that the process of growth is in many cases 
simply a gradual way of going through the same 
change that comes to others in what is called con- 
version, and there does not appear to be any 
special disadvantage in the gradual process as 
compared with the process of rapid upheaval." 
(Geo. A. Coe.) 

On the other hand, we can not go with those 
who represent conversion as a mere adolescent ex- 
perience. If it were so, all youth would pass 
through it, and it would eventuate in the Chris- 
tian life. It is capable of demonstration that 
of many of those who are converted the experi- 
ence occurs in adolescent years; but a majority 
of adolescent experiences do not result in con- 
version. The larger number of youth do not take 
the road at that time which is described by con- 
version, but turn from it into the rejection of the 
religious life. To criticise the methods of reli- 
gious workers by which they seek to secure the 
consent of youth to live the religious life, by as- 
suming that they were unnecessary, and that these 
youth would have arrived there by the adolescent 
route, is to fly in the face of abundant facts. The 
assumption that nature would bring about the 
goal is far from being warranted. 

We are of those who believe that the birth from 
above is not the mere naturalistic development 



180 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

of something in the personality of the child; but 
we also believe that the ideal work of the Holy- 
Spirit is done for the human spirit in normal de- 
velopment of the spirit of the child ; that children 
may from birth be the children of the Heavenly 
Father. Our present task is to inquire into the 
manner and methods of the Holy Spirit in such a 
case, that by co-operation with that Spirit we may 
learn to promote in increasing measure that much- 
to-be-desired end. 

Our conception is well described by the phrase 
*' birth from above." The manner of it is not 
that of an instantaneous moral change, which evi- 
dently does not fit the childhood condition, but 
rather a spiritual incoming from a pressure as 
continuous as that of the atmosphere about us. 
The birth of the human spirit we have already 
pictured as occurring during the years when the 
child is coming to human manifestation. Even 
though to some that picture may be unacceptable 
as to the birth of the human spirit, it may stand 
as our illustration of the incoming of the Divine 
Spirit. We hold that the Holy Spirit is an ever- 
present, ever-active influence upon the child- 
nature. It must be admitted that divine methods 
in general are from germinal beginnings through 
unobservable increments to fullness of life. That 
it should be so in this spiritual birth from above 
should create no surprise. We can conceive a 
great deal being done for the child before there 
is a volitional response from it. Psychologists 



THE BIRTH FEOM ABOVE 181 

recognize the change in consciousness when there 
is no consciousness of change. Along with the de- 
velopment of the mental and conscious life there 
may be a development of the moral nature giving 
a very decidedly different spiritual condition in 
the child before there has been anything like a 
choice based on the knowledge of right and wrong. 
Says Mrs. Lamoreaux: '^The nurture of these 
years is as silent as that of the dewdrop upon the 
blade of grass, but it is as real. God's voice is 
the still small voice that ever speaks in quietness. 
The stillness of the moment at the mother's knee, 
the prayer repeated in the reverent, low tone of 
the mother's voice, the earnest prayer offered for 
him in His presence, the Christlike living in the 
home, all carry their holy influence to his soul. 
He feels God without knowing Him." (*'The Un- 
folding Life," 40.) 

The first moral relation of the child that is es- 
tablished is a relation with the parent. The child 
is obedient or disobedient to the parent long be- 
fore he knows his moral relation to the Heavenly 
Parent. Right training will put into this relation 
with the parent the germ up from which will grow 
the moral nature in his relation to all other beings. 
Thus the parents in the beginning are in the re- 
lation of God to the child, and through relation 
to them the moral nature is to have its first exer- 
cise and training. We would then say, hoping not 
to be understood as saying more than we do say — 
more than should be claimed at this stage of the 



182 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

child's life— that the child that is obedient to his 
parents, thus fulfilling the highest that he can at 
that time know, is born from above, is a child of 
God. This yielding to God by proxy is all that 
can be expected of him until he has learned about 
God and His relations. I do not mean by that 
merely until he has learned to repeat by rote cer- 
tain definitions from the catechism or elsewhere — 
which teaching I most earnestly commend; but 
which for the time may be to him but little more 
than so many words — ^but until that time when his 
comprehension is intelligent and real. Doing the 
right and seeking the good is tantamount in his 
stage of development to yielding himself to God 
and seeking Him. 

Accepting God for him must be as the dawning 
day ; as gradually as the conception is formed, so 
gradually must be its response. We can not defi- 
nitely ^ the first moment of the first ray, and it 
would not be of supreme significance if we could ; 
for the increment of light received the succeeding 
moment is of as much relative importance as the 
first dawn. Each succeeding increment of God- 
consciousness also has its importance. ^'And if 
one says. But there must be a time of distinct 
choice between God and the world, the answer 
would be that at best this only fixes the beginning 
of self-consciousness in religion, and not the be- 
ginning of religion itself. And indeed, self-con- 
sciousness can rarely be thus accurately dated; 
but religion in the properly trained Christian 



THE BIRTH FROM ABOVE 183 

child has complex and untraceable beginnings in 
the spirit and atmosphere of the home, in child- 
hood prayers, in participation in religions rites 
and customs, in imitations of those about him, in 
wise parental instruction and discipline, and in the 
hidden influence of the Holy Spirit. These 
things can not be dated.'' (Bowne: ^^ Studies in 
Christianity,'' 269.) A very remarkable case of 
this in the concrete is that of Phillips Brooks. 
He had felt the call to preach and went to talk 
to his pastor about the preliminaries. His pastor 
remarked that it was usual to be converted be- 
fore beginning to preach. Brooks replied that 
he knew nothing about conversion. (^^Life and 
Letters," I, 142.) 

We are assuming that all this time the child 
is in a relation such as is technically defined as 
the justified relation to God. This relation may 
be broken in his case, as it is in the case of the 
adult by disobedience to its standard of right. 
That broken relation may be re-established by 
contrition, as also in the case of the adult. Here, 
again, the parent fulfills his function by teaching 
the child the place of repentance. These misste^DS 
and restorations have in them more of the nature 
of the sorrow and restoration as experienced by 
the adult Christian than of the breaking off of the 
wicked life by the adult sinner in conversion. 

The means of developing this God-conscious- 
ness is of importance to note. In his early years 
the child is a creature of imitation and subject to 



184 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

authority. He forms habits which at first are 
without moral content, but which become in later 
years the very means of selfhood. Hence the 
child should now be taught the habit of prayer. 
It is a great opportunity now to teach him a cer- 
tain formula of words, the deep moral meaning 
of which he can not immediately comprehend; 
but as their meaning grows in his understanding, 
their moral force comes home to his life. He can 
now form the habit of Church attendance, which 
by its very inertia may carry him subsequently 
through many an hour of indifference. The habit- 
forming period will not return again. 

Some people, not comprehending the nature of 
the child, and reasoning from the nature of an 
adult, are fearful that harm is being done him by 
having to go through actions and word-formulas 
which he does not mean, because he does not com- 
prehend them. This is an idle fear. Educators 
assure us that use or action always goes before 
the comprehension of the reasons for them. *^In 
its application to moral education this law means 
that the habit of good conduct should precede 
ethical reasoning, that the child ^s activities, in 
harmony with the best, should be developed before 
he can understand ethical principles." (Griggs: 
^^ Moral Education," 75.) A child should pray 
before he can understand the relation of God to 
man. All the religious activities may precede the 
comprehension of the reason for them. It is desir- 
able that the Church service should become fa- 



THE BIETH FEOM ABOVE 186 

miliar to the cliild before he can comprehend the 
Biblical history from which the principles of wor- 
ship proceed. The child is incapable of hypocrisy 
tor the very reason that he can not comprehend- 
e. g., teaching a child the Apostles' Creed. He 
can not know the meaning of those statements of 
behef ; IS he, therefore, consciously lying in re- 
peating them! By no manner of means. This is 
a mere formula of sounds; but those sounds will 
be imbedded in memory and will say themselves 
back to him as the years go by. As the meaning 
ot the words gradually dawn they will be ac- 
cepted or rejected in the light of all other Chris- 
tian teaching. Below the moral consciousness im- 
pressions and habits are being formed that will 
deeply grip the spirit in the coming years Our 
own convictions of the truth of our teaching is our 
warrant for it. He who is without deep convic- 
tions will have no foundation to impress these 
truths on the consciousness of his child. 

Our conception of the work of the Holy Spirit 
IS that of the near rather than the far; of the 
normal rather than the abnormal and unusual; 
of the gradual and developing pari passu with the 
physical and mental nature rather than the instan- 
taneous and the revolutionary. It fortifies the na- 
ture before habits of sin have had the first and 
best chance. It makes religion a thing of life 
rather than a preparation for death. If it were 
not a possibility, we would surely conclude that 
the religion of the Bible were an after-thought 



186 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

and not entirely adjusted to human problems and 
human nature. The child is God's own from the 
foundation of the world; it is hard to believe 
that he could be God's only by some strange work- 
ing against his nature, and subsequent to childish 
development, and at the best God could only have 
a mere remnant of his life. 

Believing earnestly, as we do, in the normality 
of childlike religion, we nevertheless believe that 
the growing youth is to have some crises in his 
development. He may proceed gradually on the 
upgrade of life, when suddenly a new vision, a 
wider horizon, opens upon him, with greater op- 
portunities, new privileges, and heavier responsi- 
bilities than those before known. Will he enter 
upon this larger day! The decision is not the 
question of conversion from a life of sin; but it 
is a question of the further progress or retrogres- 
sion of life. ' ' We have failed to make the proper 
distinction between conversion and the coming 
into clearness of spiritual consciousness. This 
latter is necessary in the case of every person, but 
conversion is necessary only in the case of those 
who have fallen away from God through volun- 
tary sin. Failing to make this distinction, we have 
fallen into the error of regarding certain expe- 
riences which come naturally to children in their 
moral and spiritual development as conversion, 
where in reality it is only what may be called * the 
spiritual awakening, ' that is a necessary incident 
to the spiritual life, when that which lies latent 
and undefined in the mind becomes active and 



THE BIETH FROM ABOVE 187 

definite. This corresponds in the spiritual life to 
what occurs ordinarily in the mental life. The de- 
velopment of the mind in any large way requires 
a mental awakening when the mind becomes eager 
and questioning and hungry; when its eyes are 
opened and it begins to look out upon the world 
of things with interest and strong desire for 
knowledge. To the soul also must come a time 
when it awakens from vague into distinct con- 
sciousness of God, when its spiritual cravings take 
definite direction, when in fact the soul becomes 
conscious of itself and its moral power. Such an 
awakening should be expected in the history of 
every child, but it may have nothing in common 
with what we know as conversion or regeneration 
in an adulf (Dr. McFarland: ^^Preservation 
versus The Rescue of the Child," 21.) Even to 
the Christian child the adolescent period is likely 
to precipitate such a crisis, and its decision is 
fraught with grave consequences. A quotation 
from Campbell Morgan will cover this point and 
much that we have already contended for. *^It is 
a great mistake to think of man as made, and then 
put in some position, where he may rise or fall, 
according to the capacity of his own personality. 
It is rather to be remembered that he was cre- 
ated in the image of God, and then put in the pro- 
bationary position, through which he has to pass 
to some larger form of existence, if his life were 
lived in union with God who created him." 
(^^Crises of the Christ," 28.) 

We are presenting no recent or strange doc- 



188 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

trine in holding to the acceptable relation of chil- 
dren to God. As good a theologian as Dr. W. F. 
"Warren, as fraternal delegate from the General 
Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Chnrch to 
the British Conference in 1882, in ringing words 
presented the following ideal : ' ' What, then, is the 
type higher and better? . . . It is the type which 
does not demand . . . that the first years of 
every life shall be given to the service of sin and 
Satan; it is the type which comes of making the 
resources of divine grace equal to all the necessi- 
ties of childhood; it is the type which comes to 
light in the Christian household when the child of 
many prayers and of intelligent Christian nurture 
yields to the drawings of the Holy Spirit so early 
and so sweetly as never in later life to know when 
it began to love God and to lead a life prayerful 
and Christian and of ever-growing beauty and 
strength. . . . Rare as its actualization may be, 
it is the type which God by His Holy Spirit is 
evermore trying to actualize in every Christian 
home. ... If the Methodism of the future is to 
be equal to her providential call and mission in 
this respect, she must not permit the exponents 
of a catastrophic piety to hide her loftier and bet- 
ter ideal. . . . She must acknowledge those 
whom God acknowledges, and, like her Lord, re- 
buking all interdiction, she must take these little 
ones in her arms and bless them, saying, ^Of such 
is the Kingdom of heaven. ' ... In our concep- 
tion there is perfect purity for the vilest sinner. 



THE BIRTH FROM ABOVE 189 

But if for the vilest sinner, how much more for 
the artless spirit of the httle child, who, under the 
influences of a Christian nurture at the very dawn 
of the spiritual consciousness, trustfully yields 
himself up to the Spirit's purifying touch." 
(The Christian Advocate, N. Y., Aug. 10, 1882.); 

Dr. Arthur H. Goodenough says: '^To make 
the child a Christian is not our business. Our 
work is to see that it never ceases to be a Chris- 
tian. The thing needed for the child is not con- 
version, but atmosphere, example, nurture, en- 
couragement. The child is in the Kingdom. It is 
the Father's own, whom Jesus loved and blessed. 
The Master pointed to the child as the pattern of 
what we ought to be ; and yet some of our brothers 
still insist that the children of their flocks must 
go to the altar, and in the one way, their way, the 
narrow way, the only way, tell God what great 
sinners they have been. To keep a child out of 
Church membership because this is not done is 
unwarranted and wicked ; and yet this very thing 
is occurring all the time. The children, sweet and 
beautiful, are being driven away from the Church 
home and shelter and help just because their 
parents will not consent to their going through 
the same forms of confession and repentance that 
are expected of hardened sinners. The parents 
are right, the Churches are wrong. Such conduct 
is cruel to the children and must be displeasing to 
the Master. " {Zion's Herald, Nov. 11, 1903.) 

Dr. Curtis, of Drew Theological Seminary, 



190 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

says: '^The child is in a spiritual condition which 
is the equivalent of the regenerated state." 
(^^The Christian Faith/' 437.) 

Stanley Hall says : ^ ^ The Lutheran children do 
not look forward to conversion. If they have been 
baptized in infancy and daily nurtured, they must 
not be assumed to be unregenerate but as already 
in a state of grace. The germs of a spiritual life 
were early planted and have grown with their 
growth, and they need no violent change or drastic 
religious experience. Religion is a growth, not a 
conquest ; but adolescence is the critical season of 
development, during which special care is need- 
ful. ' ' The above practice, it may be conceded, has 
not produced satisfactory results, and the spir- 
itual condition of the Lutheran Church in Ger- 
many is one of the most discouraging facts in the 
world. To assign the reason we do not think it 
necessary to assume the doctrine of original sin 
in infants; but rather call attention to the fact 
that the spiritual tests are all perfunctory and 
mechanical. They should be spiritual and vital. 
The theory that we maintain is by no means a 
lazy theory of religion ; a theory that assumes that 
all is well, and that, therefore, we need give our- 
selves no trouble, or that we may be satisfied with 
a few formal observances. It is just the contrary. 
It assumes the necessity of immediate and con- 
tinuous religious instruction and care. This on 
the basis that the child is already in the Kingdom 
of God and needs Christian culture all the way to 



THE BIETH FEOM ABOVE 191 

manhood. It shrinks from no test that is now 
applied to Christian people, unless the test be 
purely formal. Having done its work for the 
child, having brought it through the period when 
character is formed, it now challenges any tests 
that may demonstrate the presence of the Christ- 
life within. If now it is demonstrated that it is 
devoid of that life, we would join with others in 
what are accounted revival lines and seek to se- 
cure the conversion of the soul to God. Our prac- 
tical objection to the exclusive revivalistic method 
is that logically it would neglect the child through 
formative years, and then seek to bring him into 
the Kingdom by conquest, by revolution. This 
method we would commend only as a last resort. 
"We can not nullify absolutely the perils of 
freedom. After we have done all that human and 
even divine wisdom can suggest, there is ever a 
tribunal to which we must submit the results of 
our work. It is the august tribunal of the human 
soul itself. Man and God Himself must stand 
aside while this judge that never abdicates the 
throne renders the verdict. And yet religion is 
so reasonable, and sin is so suicidal and indefen- 
sible that the human soul, endowed with reason, 
should render such a verdict as we desire. We 
may do our work with a strong expectation of 
success, if we do it faithfully and well. Dr. S. P. 
Cadman has well expressed this confidence. He 
says: **The plane occupied at birth and during 
the earliest years should not be deserted, but main- 



192 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

tained. The spontaneous faith, the free and nn- 
mediated approach of the soul to its Creator, the 
faculties as yet uncrippled by the blows of sin, the 
warm and fragrant affection, the touching depend- 
ence on superior strength, all are hallmarks which 
are visible in the first years of this pilgrimage. 
And none can achieve a better fate than to turn 
back at eventide to the radiance that escorted his 
spirit into consciousness. How, then, do we deal 
with these morning flowers when they display 
their sweets, their gay and silken leaves unfold? 
Their spiritual experiences do not need the instill- 
ing of adult beliefs so much as the fostering of 
infant intuition. For these experiences precede 
statements of religious truth. They live in heaven 
before they conceive of heaven. 

So glorious is their nature, so august 
Man's inborn uninstructed impulses, 
His naked spirit so majestical. 

. . . There is no powerful resistance in him 
which piety must overcome to obtain a lodgment. 
. . . James Martineau says that ^ if we place be- 
fore our children the clear objects of faith, of truth 
in its beauty, and God in His holiness, they will 
respond. When we speak to them of the high 
deeds and splendid characters of the past, of the 
universe in which God lives and rules, of Jesus 
and His words and works, we may be assured the 
fruit will appear in due season. . . . Fasten his 
alert attention on the love and justice that per- 
meate the universal frame and fill the activities 



THE BIRTH FROM ABOVE 193 

of earth and boundless recesses of heaven; then 
leave these instrnctions to ripen in his susceptible 
and impressionable being, and fear not for the 
results.' " (Brooklyn Eagle.) 

This view of the relation of the child to God 
seems to have been older than Christianity. The 
practices of the Jews would indicate that they 
held their children to be members of the holy 
nation, and that their religious rights should be 
strictly observed. Dr. Charles S. Robinson gives 
the following account of the care of Jewish chil- 
dren: *^ Counsels without number are given with 
reference to all the younger members of the fam- 
ily. They were to be solemnly dedicated under 
a prescribed ordinance. They were to be trained 
in all the matters of the ceremonial law. Histor- 
ical and commemorative festivals were to be ex- 
plained to their understanding, so as to be fixed 
in their intelligent recollection. They were not 
allowed to come under the contaminating influ- 
ences which nurses of a different religion might 
possibly exert. As soon as they could speak they 
were taught to repeat sentences from the Scrip- 
tures. In the schools the law of Moses formed 
one of their common text-books. A sort of degree 
was to be taken at thirteen years old, and they 
received thereafter the name ^Sons of the Com- 
mandment.' And the settled rule in the Jewish 
nation was that as soon as they were able to walk 
up Mt. Moriah by holding on to their father's 
hands, they were to go up to Jerusalem to keep 

13 



194 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

their first Passover. All along their growing 
years until they were mature they were held under 
strictest guardianship ; and at last, when one had 
passed out of boyhood, he was brought officially 
before ten of the picked men and by solemn act 
was thrown on his own responsibility, his parents 
on that occasion soberly laying off the charge of 
their covenant and thanking God that they had 
been spared to complete his education, and now 
ofPer him to God and the nation." {Sunday 
School Times.) 



CHAPTEE XIV 

WHICH ROAD? 

Theee are two roads in which children may be 
guided: the road of animal development and the 
road which uses physical powers but subordinates 
them to higher uses — the road of spiritual over- 
development. 

The history of our subject shows that there 
have always been two roads between which choice 
was made; but they have not always been distin- 
guished as we would have them. The road of the 
spirit has been interpreted by the Puritanic 
thinker as one in which the flesh was regarded as 
in itself evil, and hence there was nothing to be 
done with it but to disregard it and deny its tend- 
encies. This road has been broadly interpreted as 
asceticism. Of course, it never was a logical road, 
or one that was possible to vigorous men. The 
consequence has been that there was ever a re- 
bellion against its standard by normal people and 
a self-depreciation by those who, accepting the 
standard as right and divinely imposed, never 
could live up to it. 

Our own day is seeing the opposite extreme. 
The study of nature is largely a study of phys- 
ical nature. Its impulses and tendencies are be- 

195 



196 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

ing set forth so as to be well understood. It is 
not this positive work which we wish to question. 
The point of danger is that the physical nature is 
not being studied sufficiently in the light of its 
purpose or intended service. If it be regarded as 
ultimate, then we have as the object of human life 
the activities of the animal or physical nature. 
Johnson the pugilist would represent civilization 's 
climax. This is the point at which the roads may 
divide. Against the culture and perfection of the 
physical nature we have no word of objection; 
but now we ask, "What next? There are two dis- 
tinct goals from this point. One is the physical 
only; the other is the perfected physical as the 
efficient instrument of the spiritual. Upon the 
choice of the goal to be aimed at will depend the 
choice and direction of future activities. One 
course is : having found out what the physical de- 
mands, supply the child with that, without further 
solicitude or program. The other says: Having 
given reasonable attention to physical develop- 
ment, what now are the demands of the spiritual 
nature which represents the ultimate self? The 
answer to this question must be determinative of 
the course taken. It is not demonstrable that the 
physical being requires all the resources of a nor- 
mal life. It is rather true that the physical itself 
has a better development when it is used as a 
means, an instrument, a servant of the higher life. 
That is a better body which is under the control 
of a moral purpose than that which has no life in 



WHICH EOAD? 19T 

view beyond its own. The man with a spiritual 
purpose may have better health and live longer 
than the man who lives only to cultivate the phys- 
ical. Thus we believe that the dominance and 
the subordination of the physical may be thor- 
oughly harmonized as a method of normal life 
for both. 

So we plead for the reinstatement of the spir- 
itual as a program of life. We plead for the guid- 
ance of parent and teacher, following their convic- 
tion as to what is good for the young life rather 
than the control of the non-moral and uninstructed 
inclinations of boys and girls as to what should 
be the discipline of their life. The pendulum of 
control has swung too far toward the impulses of 
nature. In doing so it has missed its way and will 
never reach the goal of life. Inclination, as ex- 
pressed in youthful life, is not always the same as 
nature's course. What children clamor for is 
not always and, after its course has been followed 
for a time, is seldom the demand of nature for 
their true development. Parents should know the 
laws of the child-nature and act accordingly; but 
in so doing they must not mistake the requests of 
the child as being the statement of those laws. 
Children may know what they want; but their 
wants are seldom under the control of a broad 
life-program. Parents are better able to arrange 
that. To allow mere clamor to change their course 
from the known good to the known evil is inexcus- 
able weakness, however insistent the commotion, 



198 MOKAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

and the fruitage for parent and child will be as 
bitter as if the course had been adopted from 
sheer evil purpose. When the request is based 
in a natural demand of nature it should be ac- 
ceeded to, but not always in the form which the 
child has urged it. Young people need social life. 
They should have it. The gratification of this 
need has in it the weal or the woe of the child. 
The easy way of providing for it is to turn chil- 
dren out into the street. In the case of boys this 
is the course in many cases. In the unwillingness 
of parents to pay the price of a better way lies 
more danger to our future than there is in all the 
battleships of all our possible national enemies. 
The other way is the creation of social life in the 
home, where it may be guided to high ends. This 
is costly. It wears out the carpets and mars the 
furniture. But there is more reward, greater divi- 
dends in saving boys and girls than in saving car- 
pets. 

A mother sometimes says: '*I did not believe 
my boy ought to go out this evening; but he 
pleaded so hard that I let him go." That is an 
illustration oft repeated in families in which spir- 
itual guidance loses its grip and lawless inclina- 
tion takes the reins. This course is assumed as 
defensible by many people under the pressure of 
present-day tendencies — the tendency of finding 
what the animal wants, and giving it that. If this 
is correct theory, then the assumption that human 
beings are moral and that moral control is the 



WHICH EOAD? 199 

highest expression of life, is unfounded. The rec- 
ognition of the demands and laws of the physical 
life is one thing; the abdication of moral control 
is quite another. To observe natural obligations 
and conform to them by no means requires that 
the direction of the personality should be turned 
over to passions which are too blind even to seek 
their own good, to say nothing of the good of a 
spiritual nature to which is given the insight and 
the responsibility for the present and eternal 
guidance of the whole being. The expansive 
power of steam turns the propeller and drives the 
ship through the sea. Disregard of its power 
would lead to an explosion ; failure to conserve it 
would allow it to dissipate in the air, and the ship 
without pushing power would be pounded to pieces 
by the merciless action of the waves. But it would 
be just as fatal to start the engine and leave it 
run with its mighty propulsion without a pilot to 
guide it. It would surely find the rocks and de- 
stroy all. So the passions of our nature make us 
go; but the reason, as a pilot, must steer the 
course, avoiding the rocks and finding the harbor. 
In making this plea for the over-guidance of 
the spiritual, however, we express no sympathy 
whatever for that inattention to the whole nature 
of the child which is so often displayed. Let us 
remember that ^ * that is not first which is spiritual, 
but that which is natural; and afterwards that 
which is spiritual. ' ' Every life must root itself in 
the physical. No life can be normal which ignores 



200 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

the animal nature, the physical basis, and spreads 
its tiny tendrils in the pure air of spirituality. 
We may not be able to fathom the divine reason 
for the complexity of our nature ; but we may rec- 
ognize it as a fact invincible, and believe that it 
represents a plan of God and can not be success- 
fully annulled or obstructed. We start with the 
physical. The problem is, how to direct the total 
personality up into the spiritual, as representing 
the final expression of our being. The physical is 
first, but it should not be last. The moral problem 
of life is to achieve such a mastery of the phys- 
ical, such a subordination of the physical, such a 
crucifixion of the physical, when it presents an 
unyielding obstacle, and withal such a ministration 
of the physical as shall make life in its outcome 
a total spiritual victor, and the physical shall drop 
away at last, bearing our kindliest memories, hav- 
ing accomplished its temporary purpose. Sur- 
passingly happy is the man who, as he bids it fare- 
well, can thank God for the gift and realize that 
its impulses and passions have not engulfed his 
real and final self, but have had a distinct and 
essential part in his final completeness. 

A mother, a father, should know the nature of 
their child through and through. They should 
know boy-life. If they try to build a spiritual life 
without regard to all the realities that are in the 
problem; if they talk only of spiritual things, 
frowning upon the intrusion of the natural and 
passionate; if they seek only a certain high ex- 



WHICH EOAD? 201 

pression of the spiritual nature ; if they ignore the 
fact of social inclination, physical activity, or even 
sexual impulses, the danger is that their child will 
develop, so far as their knowledge goes, a crust 
of artificiality to which the real life within may 
be unrelated. Know your children. Do not be 
content with knowing only what you would like 
them to be. Encourage them to open to you their 
desires, their inclinations, their temptations, their 
conflicts. Work from the vantage point of that 
knowledge, however heartbreaking may be its rev- 
elations. You can do more when you see than 
when you do not. You can accomplish more when 
using knowledge than when you are operating only 
with ignorance as an instrument. How many 
cases we have known where a continually pious 
conversation of parents with their children caused 
them to cultivate a suavity of manner, a guarded- 
ness of expression, a piety of apparent belief and 
life because they had learned that nothing else 
was received without reproof or distaste ! Such 
children learn to be secretive, to live a life they 
never reveal to their parents ; a life in which real 
confidences are not given ; a veneer life ; an unreal 
life the reason for which is not seated in convic- 
tion nor anchored in resolution. This is a road 
which many religious parents are tempted to 
travel. The revelation of the reality underneath 
after a while is a painful tragedy. 

In morals as in biology there is a law of the 
' ' Survival of the Fittest. ' ' It does not mean that 



202 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

the best will survive ; it means that that survives 
which best fits into the environment. Hence it 
often indicates degeneration as well as, under 
other circumstances, progress. We control the 
survival of the best by our control of the environ- 
ment. ^ ' Nature never gives a final verdict in favor 
of good or bad, but only and always in favor of 
the fit. Let the conditions change, so that rapacity 
fits them better than righteousness, . . . and 
the thing we call high will go before the thing we 
call low. . . . These laws enthroned and de- 
throned the civilization of the past : they have en- 
throned and may dethrone us. But this end is not 
inevitable, since man — and this is his great char- 
acter — not merely reacts on his environment, as 
all creatures must, but can create and re-create it. 
The business of eugenics or race-culture is to cre- 
ate an environment such that the human charac- 
ters of which the human spirit approves shall in it 
outweigh those of which we disapprove. Make it 
fittest to be best, and the best will win — not be- 
cause it is the best, but because it is the fittest: 
had the worst been the fittest it would have won. ' ' 
(Saleeby: '^Parenthood and Eace Culture," 53.) 
In the struggle of the different elements in 
human nature we may arrange for the mastery 
(survival) of the higher or the lower, according as 
we create surroundings in which the higher or the 
lower will be brought most into exercise. In an 
atmosphere of physical ideals we may expect phys- 
ical activities to grow large and strong, and spir- 



WHICH ROAD? 203 

itual activities to dwindle and slink out of sight, 
because they are uncalled for and unappreciated. 
The atmosphere is created by the conversation in 
the family circle, the books on the shelves, the 
papers on the table, the visitors in the home, the 
invited companions of the children, the home ex- 
tended in school and Church, and the undercur- 
rents of ambitions and ideals which dominate and 
spontaneously come to expression in all the ofP- 
guard moments of life. Keep thy home with all 
diligence ; for out of it are the character issues of 
thy children — is a good modern version of one of 
the prof oundest sayings in literature. One author 
makes the sweeping statement that *^all of the 
environmental conditions of the growing youth 
are faulty, save — in the case of the fortunate ones 
— the moral atmosphere of a proper home, the 
great inhibitor of all moral evils.'' (Lydston: 
' ' Diseases of Society, ' ' 403. ) 



CHAPTER XV 

SUMMAEY 

Let us connect our chain into three well-defined 
links. 1. The genesis of the child is not from an 
act inherently sinful. It is necessary to call dis- 
tinct attention to the importance of this fact, be- 
cause logically it is the source of the doctrine of 
the inherent sinfulness of human nature. That 
the child is a product of sinful passion has been 
the assumption of Christian thinkers at least since 
the time of Augustin, who had so much to do with 
the formation of Christian doctrine. We are the 
more surprised at the age-long dominance of this 
assumption when we remember that the first posi- 
tive command in the Bible was to multiply and re- 
plenish the earth. We remember also that in this 
act God takes man into partnership in the intro- 
duction of human beings into what we believe is 
the beginning of an eternal career of communion 
with Himself. It is surprising that we should re- 
gard God's part in this act as more worthy of Him 
than the speaking into existence of a material 
world, and at the same time should regard man's 
part as inherently and invincibly evil. God has 
nowhere bestowed upon man greater dignity than 

204 



SUMMAEY 205 

wlien He permits Mm to open the gate of life to 
an eternal spirit. It but manifests the immeasur- 
able destmctiveness of sin when by misuse of this 
privilege man turns the gate of life into the gate 
of death. We must awaken more and more to 
a consideration of the ruin of society which is 
being wrought by the violations of sex relations. 
By it innocent and unsuspecting brides are subject 
to irremediable disease and measureless pain ; un- 
born children are consigned to degeneracy and 
human infamy, and civilization itself is endan- 
gered. But to find that the misuse of the highest 
human function leads to the greatest enormities of 
misery and shame, is to find as ever in nature that 
the worst is but the corruption of the best and is 
no argument against the spiritual normality of 
the origin of human life. 

We are surprised, again, that a divinely im- 
planted passion, for the existence of which none 
but Grod is responsible, should in its operation be 
regarded as always in opposition to the divine 
will, and that the ideal condition of human nature 
should ever have been considered as that in which 
this passion is forever negatived and destroyed. 
To allow this assumption to continue its domi- 
nance in religious circles is to carry on a continu- 
ous warfare against the scientific world, which 
knows, if it knows anything, that the reproduction 
of individuals of the race is a biologic virtue. We 
deplore this belief again because of its degrada- 
tion of the marital life. Marriage is usually 



206 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

treated as a matter for jokes and never-ending 
suggestive allnsion. Courtship is surrounded with 
an atmosphere of dissipation and frivolity, instead 
of being the apotheosis of human relationship, as 
it should be. The biggest show of the season in 
many a town is a mock-trial in a breach-of-promise 
case promoted by a national fun-maker. If mar- 
riage be lifted up to its divine ideal, and the mar- 
ital act be regarded as a response to a divine call, 
then we have the genesis of a human being lifted 
to a plane where sin has no normal place, and the 
whole doctrine of human depravity is left without 
any foundation except the abuse of God-given 
powers and the misuse of normal human function. 
2. We have by no means eliminated moral hu- 
man struggle. It remains just as strenuous and 
as fateful as ever. The struggle is still a struggle 
against sin; but sin is differently apprehended. 
It has been considered as an inbred something, 
something that could never be eradicated until the 
God-given body was laid aside. Whatever mas- 
tery over self one acquired, whatever profession 
of victory one might make, the movement of fleshly 
impulse still existed, and this '^ movement was 
believed to be essentially sinful. The doctrine of 
Christian perfection, under such an apprehension 
of sin, was an absurd claim, and the wail of all 
ages for personal holiness must forever continue 
until the earth history is concluded— there is no 
escape while we live in the body. If our view is 
correct, victory over sin is not only a possibility, 



SUMMAEY 207 

but its non-attainment is a disgrace to every child 
of God. That victory may be attained while the 
flesh is exerting its everlasting impulsion toward 
gratification. *^The fruit of the Spirit is self- 
control, ' ' says Paul. The demand for this control 
is ever insistent, and, thank God! its possibility 
is within our reach! 

3. The third link in our chain is the vitality 
of the family-life. We would, if power sufficient 
is given us, leave the impression upon every par- 
ent that infancy and childhood are as full of des- 
tiny to the child spiritually as the prenatal con- 
dition is physically. There are certain laws which 
the parent may use, as vital in sustaining and di- 
recting the moral quality of the life, as the laws 
of food and clothing are in directing and sus- 
taining the physical life. Two of these factors 
are known as Imitation and Authority. The 
child is so made that he will imitate us ; thus God 
has put him within the absolute control of ex- 
ample. He can not help imitating us, and he has 
no action of the will during his early years which 
he may direct against this law of his nature. 
But as he does, so he is. To start with, he is an 
empty vessel, intellectually and morally. Every 
time he acts he is dropping a little grain of self- 
hood down into this vessel, and this all before he 
has come to the place of moral choice. 

In the years a little later, and on up to thir- 
teen and fourteen years of age, he is so made 
that direction by another is to him normal. He 



208 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

is fitted to receive command without interruption 
or disturbance of his proper development. This 
authoritative direction should be supplied to him 
just as food is supplied to his body, as unswerv- 
ingly as the planets in their course. So, if we will 
give him proper direction, we will secure from 
him proper action. And still, as he acts so he is. 
The vessel is not yet full. Every time he acts 
aright he is still dropping a grain of selfhood 
down into his character, against the day when 
he must take up moral self-direction for himself. 
On authority as a fundamental law of being, 
Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst has the following 
thoughtful words: ^^ Parents do well to foster in 
their children a liberty-loving spirit; but liberty 
is a positive matter, and not a negative, and con- 
sists not in what we renounce but in what we 
espouse. We emancipate ourselves, not in what 
we tear ourselves lose from, but in what we tie 
ourselves up to ; and the only liberty fit to be set 
up in the home, or anywhere else, as an object of 
admiration and an end to be attained, is the lib- 
erty that fulfills itself in zealous adherence to ex- 
ternal authority, not in its rejection. Liberty is 
a genius for obeying, and consists not in our 
successful escape from ordinance, but in the 
graceful facility with which we are able to exe- 
cute it. It is the liberty to do consciously what 
the flower does unconsciously when, without con- 
straint and without revolt, it accomplishes the 



SUMMAEY 209 

vegetable destiny decreed for it; what the star 
does unconsciously when, unhasting and unrest- 
ing, it beamingly runs the road laid down for it. ' ' 

To grasp control of the will of the child was 
one of Susannah Wesley's earliest tasks, ^^ be- 
cause,'' she continues, ''this is the only strong 
and rational foundation of a religious education, 
without which both precept and example will be 
ineffectual. But when this is thoroughly done, 
then a child is capable of being governed by the 
reason and piety of its parents, till its own under- 
standing comes to maturity and the principles of 
religion have taken root in the mind. ' ' (Stevens : 
' ' Hist, of Methodism, ' ' I, 55. ) This subjection of 
the will of the child is often criticised as if it 
were breaking the will of the child. It is no more 
breaking the will than is the staking up of a vine 
the breaking of the vine. It is rather giving di- 
rection to the will, governing it in harmony with 
the laws of its own nature, so that when it comes 
to its own independent expression it will not 
break against the unyielding forces of nature and 
society about it. 

It is only necessary further to remark that 
these two laws, imitation and authority, which are 
to be used by parents, may also be used by others. 
So that there is a negative or defensive duty 
which we owe the child. We must keep him from 
those sights and those directing and suggesting 
influences which are evil and will produce the evil 

14 



210 MOEAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 

action. If this in its completeness is an impossi- 
bility, it at least is an ideal, and its violation is 
a peril to the extent to which it may proceed. 
This empty vessel can be filled with vice as in- 
evitably as it can be filled with virtue by the oper- 
ation of the same laws. 



NOV 7 1911 



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